Code:Drabbles
by SiriExMachina
Summary: 100 Code:Breaker drabbles and short stories. Some AU, some alternate continuity, some rampant speculation.
1. Fey

Day 1: Fey

Hachiouji Rui did not think that she would ever become accustomed to Yuuki's presence.

Shibuya house had been so quiet when it was just her and the President. She'd taken care of most of the shopping and cooking in place of paying rent and he'd been in charge of financing the house's basic needs. They had worked quite well together. She stayed out of his business but only on the condition that he stayed out of hers and they lived quite happily that way for some months. She'd grown content and quite complacent without having to worry about the rest of the Code:Breakers and whatever they might think about her.

Then one day, as she was leaving the house that she'd begun to think of as her own, she found some windfall on the doorstep. A slender boy of indeterminable age lay sprawled across the doorstep as if he'd simply fallen out of the sky. Rui, the kind and conscientious person she was, kneeled down to get a look at that fey face only to discover two brilliantly aware maroon eyes staring back at her. Her first instinct was not to flinch, nor did she run. She grabbed the boy's collar, dragged him up inches from her face and snapped her neck forward.

Their foreheads collided with considerable force and the stranger's head lolled backwards. She dropped him in another undignified heap, only slightly different than the one she'd found him in, and stood with a relieved sigh. It didn't really matter to her who she'd just sent back to dreamland; not to her. Until the President turned the corner of the gate and dropped the bag he'd been carrying. "Yuuki!"

That one name would change everything.

The Third was not exactly what she'd expected. She'd heard many stories of "the most barbaric Code:Breaker" and had expected a man no less intimidating than Kouji, scars and all. What she'd gotten was an eternal youth who seemed eternally chained in a state between sleep and waking who hid another fourth his half-lit eyes with a screen of maraschino hair. The new addition to their make-shift family certainly seemed as if he'd dropped out of a dream and into their lives, bringing all the nonsensical quirks that came with the subconscious mind. The food at the dinner table simply disappeared and a clear voice full of beauty wafted through the house at nights. Rui found herself drawn by the sound just as she would follow a delicious scent to its source. Yuuki's voice was pure as fresh-fallen snow and delightfully clear of impurities, much unlike the boy himself.

Ever since he'd moved in the house seemed to need extra cleaning. Yuuki left things lying around and would, on occasion, roll as a destructive racket down the hall because something or another was bothering his ears. More things were broken in his first week in Shibuya mansion than Rui's entire stay. But, somehow, things settled into a routine. The President would help stop his rampages and Rui would solve whatever problem had caused them be it water in his ears or a bat navigating the walls.

Yuuki refused to judge her like the other Code:Breakers had. He was a special sort of person; despite the countless horrors he'd seen in the line of duty he'd never given up his childhood. Rui admired that and was surprised to see that Yuuki seemed to admire her as well.

And so life continued on at this leisurely pace for a little while until the day that a black reaper showed up on their doorstep to ask the President a favor.


	2. Bacchanalia

Day 2: Bacchanalia

Sakura Sakurakouji was a mystery.

Yuuki, Rui, Toki, Heike… Not even Oogami understood how her mind worked and that made her somewhat unpredictable in ways that they would never be able to comprehend. Sakurakouji had grown up in an entirely different world after she'd lost her memories, ripped out of theirs and transplanted into another. She'd forgotten their ideals, their thoughts, their ways, and learned a whole new set of rules that were downright foreign to them. Yes, they'd been trained to blend in but training never quite measured up to the real thing. You couldn't teach something that was supposed to come naturally.

And that's why they couldn't understand Sakurakouji. She had something that they never would; a soul.

No, they could never understand Sakurakouji nor could they predict her. And that was why, when they came home from a long day in the field, the presence of balloons, cups, and the odd plate of food, was absolutely baffling.

It didn't appear to be for dinner as they'd already eaten and it couldn't have been for anyone's birthday. They'd thrown all of those away long ago along with their pasts. (But they'd never really thrown them away had they? Not really.) None of them had a birthday to celebrate.

"Welcome back!" She chirped from the kitchen, whirling around so that her constantly shifting hair curled out behind her.

Yuuki immediately rushed up to her and asked, in his usual blunt manner, what was going on. The others held back, eager for some sort of explanation before they took any sort of action. Even Toki seemed unsure of himself.

"It's a party." Sakurakouji replied, laughing at their baffled faces.

"Why the hell'd you throw a party?" Toki asked. Despite his doubts he'd already picked up one of the many surrounding snacks and started to eat.

Sakura gave him one of her candid smiles and pushed a plate into his hands. And so the party began.

The bacchanalia lasted until well after midnight. At some point Toki had produced some alcohol from God-knew-where and somehow they'd all ended up sprawled across the furniture.

Sakurakouji and Oogami were the only ones left awake. Neither had partaken of the alcohol, Sakurakouji because the President insisted for some odd reason and Oogami because he was not the sort to relish in losing his rational thought.

"That was fun, wasn't it?" Sakurakouji asked, pulling an armful of blankets from the broom closet to cover the vacant sleepers who covered the place. "Everyone seemed to enjoy it."

Oogami nodded in agreement though he seemed unsure of why he agreed. "We've never had a party like that before. None of us have ever had the time."

Sakurakouji didn't seem surprised. She pulled a blanket over the air and let it settle down over Toki's prone form. "After you said that none of you had ever been to a festival I thought none of you had ever had a party before either." Another blanket hooked around Yuuki's heels and hung around his shoulders. He'd fallen asleep as if he were sitting on the wall again. Sakurakouji was not particularly surprised about that either.

"Is that why you threw this party?" Oogami began picking up the various dirty plates and forks that had diffused through the room over the course of the night. "No matter how much you try our lives will never be peaceful. We gave up any hope of normality along with our pasts. That's why we're Code:Breakers."

But Sakurakouji just smiled as she liberated an empty can from the Prince's grasp. That little smile said more than words ever could.

Oogami raised a flag of surrender with his silence and returned to the dishes. That smile told the truth; while maybe that was yesterday, tomorrow, and this morning, it wasn't now. And what was the harm in that?


	3. Revenant

Day 3 – Revenant

Oogami found that he was not surprised to see the revenant Code:Emperor sprawled across a pile of skulls. There were no other bones here. Apparently the Emperor had a taste for the macabre as long as said macabre could be found patterning clothes in a high-end-low-end store. Oogami would have laughed if he felt it was an option.

The throne of skulls was cushioned by a bolt of plush velvet that looked just about as far from the grave as anything else in this place did, which meant that it seemed as if it had been plundered from a grave some years ago. The Emperor had no taste.

This was, in all honesty, his first time seeing the Emperor. He'd heard a bit about him from his older brother and had known one or two things about him because of Sakurakouji's mother, however he'd assumed him long dead and gone. Well, here he was himself dead and gone and there was the Emperor in front of him.

He was younger than he'd expected; Oogami hazarded that he was only a year or two older than he was. This was not saying much; Oogami was only a tot himself at this point.

"Hey, kid. Stop gaping like a fish on a line and tell me your name. And get down on your knees while you're at it; you're in the presence of the great Code:Emperor, you know?"

Oogami clumsily faltered and jerked down, holding out his arm to catch himself only to fall face-first into the blood-soaked void. The Emperor really did have horrible taste. He tried to push himself up, baffled as to why he'd fallen, and then remembered the reason why he was here. The reason why he was dead. He as missing his arm; there was no blood left in his little, broken body. Was this Hell? It certainly wasn't heaven. Perhaps it was purgatory. "My name's Oogami Rei." He mumbled, keeping his head low. He figured that if he tried to get up the Emperor would see it as a sign of disrespect. Oogami had been considerably more timid in those days.

"Well, Rei. Didn't expect to see you here so soon. You have some pretty shitty luck, don't you?" The Emperor floated out of his seat and one of his platform heels pressed a semi-circle into the back of Oogami's blood-matted hair. "You want to die, kid? Or live? I can work with either."

"I don't want to die." Oogami muttered into the ground, teeth gritted. "I don't want to die."

"But do you want to live?"

Oogami was stunned; it had never occurred to him to think of it that way before. No, he didn't want to die but did he really want to return to the outside world with all of its pain and suffering? Did he want to return to his abusive brother? To a reality in which his mother was no longer alive? To the place where his friend had just murdered him? "Yes." That was the answer. "Yes. I want to live. I don't want to die. I want to live."

The Code:Emperer smirked and the weight of his boot lifted from Oogami's head, leaving a faint impression in the sticky red hair. "You're my host from now on. I'll be your heart and you'll be my body. Get it?" Oogami didn't get it but nodded anyway. The Emperor laughed. "You're a good kid. Now let's make a deal."

And maybe it was a sort of hell.


	4. Irrefragable

Day 4 – Irrefragable

Their battle lasted for days. Neither faltered, neither stumbled, neither missed a beat. Neither felt that they could afford to. Yukihina was not the sort to wish for slavery and Heike was all too fond of the idea of bondage, literal or metaphorical. It was what he lived for. Yukihina learned fairly early on through their banter that Heike did not really want a servant who would bend to his every whim; what he wanted was the idea of a slave; he wanted someone bonded to his will, pure and simple. All the same Yukihina would not be the anchor for such an idea. He did not like being tied to anything.

That is why, after three long days when Heike's ropes of light finally caught him and dragged him down to the ground, when he was sure that he had lost and was now "bound" by their bet, he used the last reserves of his power that he'd been saving for such an event to cast a shard of ice through his heart.

But Heike was not the sort to be cheated so easily. He pulled Yukihina's soul from the very bridge of the Styx and trapped it in its former, now battered, home with a few clever knots.

Yes, Yukihina had succeeded; he had escaped Heike's grasp and been irrefragably dead. Unfortunately Heike had lassoed him and bound him in the worst way possible; to eternal life of slavery.

But there was one way out Heike told him. Just one. If he could beat his keeper just once then he'd be free. There was a way to escape the web, or so he thought. But unbeknownst to Yukihina, the challenge had simply spun more threads of spin spider silk around himself, drawing him further into Heike's trap. The harder he struggled to get away, the more they met and the tighter the bindings of hatred drew.

And Heike? Heike didn't mind who was in that trap, or what sort of emotions held them there as long as they were tied to him.


	5. Billow

Yuuki was like a dancer.

Sakurakouji gaped in awe as he pounced, bouncing from wall to wall on the balls of his feet without faltering or erring. His movements were no less than poetry in motion, and quite honestly it would be best to describe them as fluid light. Of course brilliance was Heike's domain, but Yuuki couldn't help but exude an aurora of light-hearted joy.

Of course, this was hardly an occasion that deserved jubilation. Yuuki was fighting for his life and theirs. All the same it looked like a dance.

His white, tattered coat billowed out behind him more like robes than a well-loved piece of clothing. The tatters of his shirt fluttered in the wind, feathers ready to take flight. Most times Yuuki was awkward, unpredictable, and bizarre. But like this he was beautiful. It seemed as if he more than belonged here; like this place belonged to him. As if this battlefield was created simply to serve as a backdrop to his presence.

He landed easily on a dumpster and Sakurakouji was surprised to hear a clang; for one perfect moment she'd been convinced that Yuuki had no more substance than a dream. Of course that wasn't true, or else the alley would not have drifts of enemies littering its walls now. But when Yuuki "danced," well, nothing else really seemed to matter.


	6. Mendacity

Toki Fujiwara was infamous for his mendacity, even among the Code:Breakers. While none of them were very honest with anyone due to the nature of their occupation, Toki lied to friend and foe alike for no greater reason than that he could.

Ogami had learned that it was a better bet to expect the opposite of Toki's professed plans than to believe his word. It was also how he knew that Toki really was quite fond of their little family arrangement in Shibuya house. Though the man would swear up and down that his days in the house were some of the worst days of his life, Ogami knew full-well that that meant exactly the opposite. Toki had never lived until he'd moved into Shibuya house and his maturation had died there among the scattered remains.

Toki seemed unaware that his constant lies were a double-edged sword. While they did conceal his thoughts and opinions from strangers, those closest to him had no trouble finding the truth behind the lie. Toki was not creative; his lies were never of the abstract sort that could not be picked; quite the contrary. The extent of his duplicitous skill ensured that for every lie there was an equal and opposite truth.

Toki, however, was unaware leaving him vulnerable to easy interpretation and leaving him none the wiser.


	7. Fishnets

Day 7- Fishnets

Rui Hachiouji didn't like it. She didn't like it at all. Unfortunately it wasn't as if she had a choice; her precious Shibuya mansion had been destroyed in ways that their budget had no way of repairing. They simply couldn't rebuild half a house on a school president's budget; it was impossible. And so she was stuck in this situation.

"Thank you for all of your support. I will do my best." Rui muttered, bowing in an uncharacteristically humble manner; it pained her to behave this way but it wasn't as if she had much of a choice at all. No one would hire the real her; the tough-skinned murderer who'd essentially attempt to incapacitate anyone who dared to compliment her. Honestly, in her opinion, she was the last person on earth suited to be any kind of idol and, as a Code:Breaker, she shouldn't be in the public eye in the first place. But the President had, rather unfortunately, heard her singing and convinced her that it was for the good of Shibuya mansion. And it wasn't as if she didn't have her own reasons.

Unfortunately, when she'd agreed to Shibuya's insane scheme to save what she was convinced was _her _mansion, she hadn't anticipated that becoming an idol meant that she'd have to dress like one. Black tights with a white fishnet pattern and a white dress that made it incredibly uncomfortable for her to walk; she was a woman of pants, not skirts; she hadn't worn one since she was a child and she was wildly uncomfortable. She shifted, trying to make the skirt cover more of her legs, and then relenting to pull the neckline up and cover more of her chest. It wasn't working, though she did suspect that the clothes were, at least, making it a bit easier to play the part of a humble girl looking for her path to stardom. Somehow, somehow she'd managed to fool them and, after a few gigs at a bar and a few more at higher class establishments she'd been 'discovered' and had just been booked for her first real performance.

Her manager slapped her on the back and gave her a wave as he disappeared around the corner; he had no place here now in the liminal area between the public eye and the world behind the scenes. A little light filtered onto her toes from beyond the curtain; she could hear the crowd screaming and cheering various things; out of unison and incomprehensible, but some of it was almost certainly her stage name. It was her; they were cheering for her. Her face lit up bright red- something in her snapped. So many people were out there and all of them had paid to be here and see her. But before she could destroy any of the expensive equipment on an embarrassed rampage, the plush hand of Shibuya's costume gently pulled her head back from the light. She looked back at those button eyes behind which Shibuya hid and thought, in a moment of wild fancy, that she might have seen some sort of encouragement there. She smiled. He nodded.

And she stepped out onto the stage.


	8. This isn't what I came here for

"This isn't what I came here for." Toki states matter-of-factly after taking a nice long drag from his cigarette. "This is not what _we _came here for."

Yuuki looks back over his shoulder and caps his marker, having finally finished what amounted to a giant mural on the side of a huge storage container that contains more guns, bombs, and general yakuza weapons than you could shake a stick at. "I don't wanna work."

"You never want to work." Toki replies. He is starting to get a pounding headache, though that is how it always happens whenever he is unfortunate enough to get stuck on a mission with this sad son of a bitch. Yuuki has always been a lone wolf and Toki suspects that he acts this way on missions to spite him for even being there. They are to take out a mafia den and dispose of their weapons but all they have accomplished so far is to draw storyboards of the first season of the Nyanmaru anime over three giant cartons of AK-47s and murder two guards (though that had been Toki's doing entirely- Yuuki had simply ignored them.)

"'Cause I hate Eden." Yuuki shoots back, carefully securing the marker in one of his voluminous pockets before standing straight.

"Then the hell are you a Code:Breaker?"

Yuuki ignores him and flounces off to find the next available empty surface to write on. It wasn't as if Toki expected an answer but he is angry all the same. That is why, when half a dozen men burst into the room guns blazing, he doesn't make a single move to save Yuuki. Unfortunately he doesn't have to; one shout from Code:03 and a shockwave sends the bullets flying back at their parent weapons. Perhaps not with the accuracy that Toki could've achieved, but at least with similar force. The worst part about it is not that Yuuki doesn't die nor that he has proved himself just as capable of doing Fourth's job as he is, it's that he's made it all look like an accident. If Toki knew he wouldn't be punished he would kill him right then and there.

Two of the men are writhing on the ground in obvious pain from gunshot wounds. One is lying still. The other three seem unharmed but shaken, but that wouldn't hold them for long and Yuuki does not seem much inclined to do anything about it. He has taken to sitting on one of the containers and singing to the iron beams above. Toki groans and sends the remaining bullets into the remaining yakuza. They fall to the ground and their blood splatters across the concrete. And all the while Yuuki's voice floats through the musty air; a lullaby for their fleeting souls.


	9. Thanatopsis

Day 9- Thanatopsis

The first time Yuuki kills he doesn't sleep for days. He doesn't want to be a murderer; he was not born to be one. Though then again, perhaps he was. But his soul is not that of a killer. It is the soul of a playful child torn asunder by the death of his friend and patched back together with hope for his revival. Even as his voice and fists rips the life from his first victim he is thinking of Makoto and how every drop of blood that falls from this odious man is another chance at life for his friend. This does not stop the tears.

He is twelve at the time.

The second time Yuuki kills is also the third, fourth, and fifth. He finds that taking several lives at a time is easier- He wonders if Stalin was on to something when he commented on the inverse relationship between the number of deaths and the amount of empathy they elicited. These three are corrupt cops who have been using their power to embezzle money from the government. He wonders if the theft of money is equivalent to the theft of life and asks it aloud when he is given his assignment. The figures behind the podiums tell him to think only of Makoto; he has chosen this life and he'd best remember why rather than fretting over the morality of it all. They assure him he will not last long if he focuses on the rights of others. Yuuki decides that this is true; thanatopsis will only hinder his path to healing Makoto.

By the twelfth time Yuuki kills he finds he no longer questions the orders he's given. Of course he feels bad about it but only on principle. It is his thirteenth birthday and he is more concerned with his cake than the blood on his hands.

The day of his thirtieth kill he discovers Nyanmaru. He finds an old issue of the magazine it is serialized in under the body of his target. Mildly curious he flips through it, marring the pages with blood. A page catches his eye, then another, then another. By the time his supporter arrives to take care of the body he has finished the magazine and tucked it under his arm. Some of the light has returned to his eyes- light that has been extinguished under the weight of thirty corpses. He is given new clothes and a ride home to wash the blood from his skin.

He uses the money from the kill to buy all the Nyanmaru books he can find.

Killing is never easy again.


	10. Procellous

Kouji and Yukihina were opposites in every way; Yukihina was a placid sort, rarely concerned with the value of live and unaffected by the happenings around him. Kouji on the other hand was hot blooded and procellous with a certain respect for life that few power users had possession of. They had not really expected to get along when they first met; their relationship started as rocky at best; Kouji, looking for a place to belong among a world that didn't seem to know him much less understand him, had found his place at Code:Seeker's side. By then Yukihina was already there. To Kouji's knowledge Yukihina had initially joined Code:Seeker with the knowledge that being his ally would give him ample opportunity to plot a thank-you gift of premeditated murder for Masaomi Heike. Somewhere along the way Yukihina had discovered that his ideas were not entirely different form Code:Seeker's and they had begun to get along.

Their personalities were very different and this lead to a great deal of conflict when Kouji first joined Code:Seeker's strange and growing band. Lilly would often laugh at their arguments, thinking that they were, somehow, hilarious. They did not agree and once, without even thinking of it, lashed out at her simultaneously. She avoided them after that.

They were rarely together all the same; though Code:Seeker could not exactly be called a compassionate and understanding man he seemed to understand that it was in everyone's best interests that they did not spend a great deal of time together. That is, until Rui came. A lot of things seemed to change when Rui came; she wasn't like Lilly. She didn't flirt nor was she in any way insecure. She dressed like a man, walked and talked like one. She found her way into Kouji's heart as a comrade quite easily and then, much to everyone's surprise, managed to find a way to melt some of the ice that Yukihina's apathy seemed to be composed of; it's like she doesn't even try.

Rui Hachiouji is the person who brings them together and makes them a family; before they were simply a group of outcasts and outsiders looking for an excuse, almost any excuse, to take revenge on society for the perceived wrongs it had given them. Of course, Rui was not very happy with the way that her life had gone either but that was hardly stopping her from enjoying it. From the moment they arrived wherever they went be it England or Ethiopia, Belgium or Botswana, there were homemade meals. There may not have been a smile when they returned to their hiding place but there was warmth of a sort. Somehow everyone, including Code:Seeker himself, seemed to relax. He may have feared he was growing soft and that was, perhaps, why she was the one he sent to Eden. He could send her away and did, but he couldn't banish the changes she had made. Kouji and Yukihina had found that, rather than being in constant conflict, their personalities could complement each other. They'd gained more members and had become an odd sort of family that none of them had ever expected possible in a group of hell-bent killers.

Though Rui had left she never seemed particularly absent and that was, perhaps, what kept them together when their leader was gone. No one, not even Yukihina, could abandon family.


	11. Fusty

It's fusty back here, in Shibuya's safe, because he doesn't like to go back here that often if he can help it. And fortunately he doesn't have to; the need to refresh his rare kind elixir is a rare one and the rest of the things in here are not for common use. None of them contained very pleasant memories, least of all Pandora's box.

There are little things as well; a photo album from when his family was together,' a trusty old hat, his college diploma. They weren't quite dangerous like many of the other things were. They held no secret treasures and nothing was sealed there-in beyond painful memories. He'd locked them up in here beyond door after door because they were reminiscent of a simpler time when he'd been young and free; before any of this December 32nd business. Though they were painful, Shibuya couldn't bear to toss them aside and so he kept them here, gathering dust, as a constant reminder of what had been and what was to come.

I'm glad people are reading and reviewing! It makes me very happy! Sorry today's drabble's pretty short- I had to stop halfway through and forgot where it was going. I've opened PMs if anyone wants to discuss things!

Also I'm aware there are several far-fetched or perhaps inaccurate things in these drabbles. I'm sorry if it bothers you! Honestly I just sorta write them without going back to check if things are exactly right. It's just a fun writing exercise so maybe I don't take it as seriously as I should. There's also the problem of clashing headcanons and such. XD All the same I'd like to thank you all for bearing with me and reading!


	12. Penchant

Hitomi had always wondered at the things that Eden tolerated and the things it didn't. It seemed rather arbitrary even to a trained eye like his. The longer he worked for them the less he understood. While he was a Code:Breaker and therefore was, apparently, above the law, there were many rules that he could break that would end in his execution. Those he executed did not always break laws, and those he spared broke many. They tolerated his bouts of sleeping and lack of apparent drive and even the occasional blasphemous comment against Eden itself, but if he were to question the treatment of Code:Breakers or inquire about what happened to those who came before him he knew that he would be punished.

He had enjoyed the life that Eden had given him, up until a point. It was nice surviving on the wages of a job that took very little of his time. He never had to go to school, nor did he have to spend hours and hours at a desk checking figures. At first it had been fun, though it had taken some time to adjust to the killing. He'd risen through the ranks number by number, watching those above him either be demoted or killed until he became Code:01. He'd never really expected to reach such a high position, particularly regarding his attitude and penchant for naps, however he was mildly pleased by that development. The weeks leading up to the promotion had been so busy he'd hardly had time to think about what had happened to his so-called companions. But once he'd reached the top things quieted down; they saved him for the worst of the assassinations. He was no longer required for the little things like corrupt politicians or serial arsonists. And now he had time to think.

He wondered about many things in that first week. How and why Eden existed, who had started it, how it would stop and, most importantly, what had happened when he died. He looked for the tombstones of those lost in the line of duty and found none. There were no obituaries though he was not sure he'd expected them. No family had been contacted, if family could even be found. Not a single flower petal graced the site of their deaths. Hitomi thought, thought, and thought some more of all of those he'd seen lost and of all the battles he'd survived that he shouldn't have and, most importantly, of all the people they'd saved. He and his companions lived and died for the sake of the people and the people would never know. The more he thought the angrier he became. It was not a familiar emotion and its intensity shook him to the core, drowning out obligation and self-preservation in a storm of all-encompassing rage.

That was when he started to look at clocks.


	13. Educe

The festival had, since early days, been intended to educe latent powers and abilities of power users and so the timing of it could not be better; all of the former ex Code:Breakers who had broken free of Eden's edict so to speak were in desperate need of some sort of power-up be it mental, physical, or a bit of both. Toki needed to overcome his faults and mature while Ogami simply needed more power.  
>Yuuki himself needed both of these things; he was naïve and well aware of the fact; he'd embraced it for, perhaps, far too long. On top of that he was afraid; not of being injured nor of failure. He was afraid of rejection due to his newfound weakness; he'd built his confidence on his strength and his whole existence was a matter of being strong. He was allowed to act strange because he was capable of getting the job done regardless; he was allowed to act as a child because he was more powerful than most adults. He'd taken pride in his position as Code:03 and now that that ranking was meaningless and most of his power gone he had little left to stand on. Without Eden, without being a Code:Breaker, he was less than nothing. Of course if he'd told the others his thoughts they would not agree. He was still in a position to protect them and he still owned the Tenpouin group. He was far richer and more successful than the rest of them combined.<br>The problem was, of course, his powers.  
>He had no idea what to do without them; he was at a total loss and so when the opportunity to regain them presented itself he threw himself into it with reckless abandon. He fought with all his strength, trying to retain his nonchalant and devil-may-care attitude so as not to worry the others and passed his test with flying colors. There was euphoria of course; a sense of something lost regained, but it left as quickly as it came.<br>Nothing had happened; he had passed the test but nothing had changed.  
>And finally, after all that time, his composure crumbled and he left to go to a quiet place where maybe he could hear the stars again.<p> 


	14. Paternal

Sometimes, when Rui returns to Shibuya house, she finds a packet shoved under her door. The packet comes in a white envelope, sealed shut, with her new name and number on the front in Helvetica. The word "Code" is Romanized; likely because it is Heike doing the writing. She opens her door, scoops up the envelope, and carries it out back to go with the combustible trash without examining its contents. When she returns she finds another envelope secreted away in her bookshelf, this time a little fatter. She throws this one away as well. This is a sort of dance that she has with Heike; he will leave his judgment of her performance under her door in the days following a mission and she will toss it away without a second glance. Heike will counter by leaving a second envelope containing all of the reports that she has ignored in the past somewhere in her room along with a note threatening to punish her for being a bad girl. She fails to care and he fails to do anything. She is not here to please Eden; she is here for the One Being Sought and no one else. Rui will do just as little or just as much as she must in order to stay in Eden's good graces and no more and so she does not look at the reports.

Heike himself does not like where Eden is going. He has been there since it began; the organization is his child. Unfortunately it is a rebellious one and his paternal instinct is waning in rebellion. Heike does not like bad children but this one has grown out of control. For now he will play along because it is safer but he will not punish its employee, Rui, for her small act of agitation. Rui is never punished but Heike cannot leave his child just yet; there are many things left to do before he can apply discipline for its bad behavior.

And so the dance continues.


	15. Equilibrium

Maeda has noticed that things are changing lately; have been changing ever since Ogami arrived. He hadn't been too wary of the transfer student at first glance. He seemed average. Average hair, average face, average personality, average life. The only threat he posed to anyone, as far as Maeda was concerned, was as a rival in love for Sakura's affection. Transfer students were rare, yes, but he saw nothing special. But things began to change all the same.

It started with Sakura- He'd been watching her for years, occasionally with amorous intent but more often as the friend of a sibling, that sibling being Aoba. Sakura became serious. She did not smile quite as much, nor did she laugh. She stayed focused on Ogami with eager eyes as if waiting for something to happen. Aoba had complained that she rarely had free time any more though she was not sure why. Maeda had been concerned but wrote it off as young love and all the evidence did seem to support it. As time went on Sakura started to smile and laugh again and as far as he was concerned all was well.

The next change came from Dekasugi. Around the time that Ogami started to come to classes covered in bruises and Band-Aids. Ogami had always been injured from time to time though not quite as often. Maeda chalked it up to battles against Sakura's potential suitors and moved along. But Dekasugi was far more difficult to ignore. He'd never been outspoken but as of late he'd fallen completely silent. He stared out the window and disregarded the teacher and aking to a Maeda found himself reminding him to go to the next class or eat. After school was over he always rushed away with some grunted excuse or another and one day, late at night, Maeda saw him in a café speaking to a man with a gothic school girl in pigtails and a man with a scar on his temple. Then, all at once, it was over. Ogami came to school looking like he'd been run through a shredder and Dekasugi, though he seemed sad, suddenly seemed to have all the time in the world. Maeda never made a connection and time moved on.

Things seemed like they would return to some sort of equilibrium after that; Ogami and Sakura seemed very relieved and, though the staff had made several drastic changes, the air seemed calmer.

And now Aoba stopped joking.


	16. Princess

Heike finds Nenene curled amongst a pile of books on theoretical physics and Nyanmaru, napping with her glasses still on. She may seem unpredictable to the untrained eye but Heike has never had trouble guessing where she is at any given time. It is 2:00 on a rainy Thursday; she is in the library and he knows it just as well as he knows the shape of his face. He almost cracks a real smile when he sees her there; she's always brought a little light welcome shade to the burning desert of his heart.

He sits himself in a nearby chair, crosses his legs at the ankle, and pulls out a book. It would not do to wake the princess; He will wait. He's always waited- always had been waiting for that little spot of happiness and trust. Waiting just a little longer for her to wake is no trouble at all. After all it would be a great shame to rouse her from her dreams.


	17. Vernal

It's the day after they kill Ogami's older brother. Yuuki likes to think of it as something that 'they' have done though it is really Ogami's doing. He cannot imagine life without Ogami or Nyanmaru or even Fourth and Fifth now. He is no longer a loner though he thinks that the others have yet to notice. He's always been the rouge of Eden. The wild card that is unpredictable but deadly; able to change into whatever Eden needs to do the job at hand whether they know it's what they require or not. His transformations are not for the sake of Eden or the mission; they are temporary forms. The more selves he has the further the guilt is spread. The further he travels and fewer attachments he forms the more selves he can grow. He doesn't think they've noticed.

His early years were winter; a cold, unchanging period of stagnation. Makoto came with spring, allowing Yuuki's rapid cycle of change to begin. But now, now that Ogami has appeared, he can hear a particularly vernal tone in the air and he knows that another period of stasis is coming. The Yuuki that he is right now will be the Yuuki that he will be through the summer regardless of what happens; even if that thing inside him wakes up. Before he'd been afraid of losing those little bits of himself he'd secreted away if that thing awoke, but now he has no such fear. He is not sure if this is good nor is he sure if it was bad. It only is.

He slips a nail under the edge of the tight wrappings around his palm and yanks upward. The bandage gives only slightly; Fifth is very good at first aid but Yuuki is just as persistent. He tugs again and finds an end. He moves a bit further down the strip and pulls and wiggles and cajoles until the wrappings oscillate down onto the tiling. There is a hole in this hand, clear through. Seeker's blow missed the bones only by the grace of good luck. He holds it up to the sun and feels the rays that shine through the tear hit his face. He hardly feels the pain now; he hasn't in years. The hand comes back down and, despite his pierced palm, he manages to undo the corresponding bandage on his other hand. He holds this one up to the sky but the light doesn't come through; perhaps a little further and he could watch the stars through this palm too but Nyanmaru and Sixth and Fifth and even Second have told him not to get hurt more than necessary. Whatever necessary means, that is. He doesn't know and dares not hazard a guess. Back in Cambridge under a very different sun Yuuki's professor told him that it is better to maximize false positives as opposed to false negatives. Yuuki has taken this to heart and so he protects this little taste of summer from the slightest potential threat with the brunt of his body for fear that if he does not someone will die.

He wants to pick the hole a little further and in the sun that shines through it find, perhaps, a sort of salvation. Perhaps even a month ago he would have dug in his claws in and ripped out a window but the voices of the numbers ring in his ears and he gathers the wrappings because, though it is almost summer, there is still a chill of spring in the air and you can never be too careful lest the equinox does not come.


	18. Sensory

When Yukihina wakes it is with a sense of vague confusion.

He does not know his name.

He does not know if he's ever had one.

He is not sure where he is, nor why he is there, nor how he got there and everything is cold. He touches his face to warm his fingertips but it is just as frigid. He touches his neck to search for a pulse but finds none. Inspection of his wrist reveals just as little. He rakes a nail down his arm- it splits the skin but causes no sensory distress. The cut starts to heal before he's even finished it. A chill fills him and he wonders if he is dead or sleeping.

He hears a chuckle just ahead and, for the first time in his memory, sees that production line smile that has been pasted under two lifeless yellow eyes and feels a rage-tinged sense of dread. He hopes that this is only a dream but, if it is not and he is dead he will make sure that this smiling man, whose smile is just a little too wide and hair just a little too white, will join him in hell.


	19. Chelonian

Yukihina was not sure when they had become friends, nor why. Up until recently he never would have called it a friendship and would, perhaps, have thought it inconceivable to form one with someone so many years his junior but as of late it had been increasingly difficult to deny and he had given up trying.

Yuuki was curled up next to him in a chelonian manner, letting out soft breaths of sleep and occasionally twitching as if reaching for another meat bun or running through a field. He may have been a cat but in some ways Yukihina thought that he was more of a dog. He'd never liked dogs, nor had he liked cats, but things were changing.

The first time that they met face to face was in an alleyway and Yukihina found it appropriate in retrospect. A stray cat was most likely to be found in an alley and, though he had been the pet of Eden in his early years, there was no doubt in Yukihina's mind that Yuuki was a stray at heart by then. He sometimes regretted not trying to 'adopt' him sooner, however Yuuki was his cat now so little had been lost. The boy, or perhaps he was a young man now, rolled onto his back and draped an arm across Yukihina's knees. Rather than pushing it off, Yukihina just brushed the hair out of Yuuki's face and returned to staring out the window. Disturbing the cat during his nap would only serve to get him clawed and, though it would not really hurt, he would prefer that Yuuki stay peacefully napping and that his own skin stay intact.

The time ticked by with nary a sound. Kouji did not come to visit nor did Rui; the two had often found it necessary to make sure that he had not killed Yuuki or, in some other way, maimed him. It seemed that even Kouji, who'd been with him for years, found it difficult to believe that they were so close. That was fine because Yukihina was confused himself. The only one who wasn't baffled was Yuuki. After some stretch of time Yuuki woke up, grumbled, and dug his nails into Yukihina's leg. The man hardly flinched. He reached to his left, found a bottle of milk that, while not cold, was fairly cool, and managed to wrap his stray's fingers around it. Yuuki seemed to try to glare a hole in the glass but ripped off the lid and downed it in less than a minute. As the milk drained from the glass the tension drained from Yuuki's shoulders and he stretched himself across the floor. "Hey, Yukinko." He said, voice scratchy from sleep. "What're you gonna do after the fighting's over?"

Yukihina could only assume the question was drawn from a dream. He did not answer; just scratched Yuuki behind his ear. Like the cat that he was the boy instantly closed his eyes and seemed to melt onto the floorboards in contentment. There was no answer to give him because, for them, the fighting would never end. But Yuuki did not need to know. He was still a kitten after all.


	20. Lapse

It feels like he's drowning but he doesn't really care. Doesn't mind the baffling lack of emotion swirling in his gut. The men in their coats come and go and when they fail to incite any feeling the women try and fail.

It has been two months, three weeks, and six days since Makoto lapsed into a coma. It has been little more than a week since Yuuki left Eden for his first kill and ninety-six hours since Shigure decided to place the weight of Makoto's life on his sometimes-friend-sometimes-enemy's shoulders. And now, for the first time in four hundred and one thousand, seven hundred and eighty minutes, he smiles because he's finally, finally empty.


	21. Tea

Heike remembers the days when Sakura Sakurakouji was an ordinary high school student quite well. For a given value of ordinary that was. He remembers before when Code:Seeker, Eden's only active threat, spent his time gathering followers far abroad and his biggest concern was the culture festival budget.

He remembers how, when the student council room got too lonely, he would carry his table into the hallway along with a pot and a cup of lemon tea and how the crowds would split and avoid him as if sensing that the secretary of the student council was something other than human. Occasionally Nenene would join him though she preferred hiding under the table to joining him for tea. If he asked, and he often did, Ms. Sakurakouji would join him for tea though their encounters were often brief. She tended to leave sooner rather than later. And he would watch her go with a vague smile on his face knowing that she had no idea who she was or what was to come. Those who did notice the smile would shudder in a way that was almost comical or would have been had they known what he was doing.

Heike remembers those days with a sense of fond nostalgia not because he misses them but because he recognizes them as a prologue to the latest and greatest chapter of Eden's rise and fall. And he sips his lemon tea (with just a dash of alcohol now) while surrounded by the bodies of the fallen. The man he killed, the boy his creation had birthed, the songstress he'd corrupted, and the wolf that had no choice but to follow, look on as the curtains open on Eden's final act.


	22. Wight

And the dead come marching in, marching in, marching in one after another to replace the ranks of those who are too broken to fight anymore.

The first of the endless army of wights that Hitomi attempts to teach is named Yuuki Tenpouin and he is little more than a child. They first meet on Yuuki's fifth kill and Hitomi's eighty-ninth. Yuuki's handlers (there are two- one posing as his mother and another acting his father) lead him into the briefing room and leave him with Hitomi without a single word. The boy barely comes up to his waist and he wonders how a child could have died so young. He tries to be the parent that Yuuki never had but his handlers feel some sort of paternal jealousy and take him away. He manages to teach Yuuki how to rest, relax, and rebel but little more. The child leaves his handlers behind and travels far and wide, meandering up the ranks through a field of bodies. Hitomi never sees him again.

The second child that Hitomi tries to mentor, unlike Yuuki, starts at number six. He does not have a name for the first week he knows him; he has thrown away his old one and, in fact, refuses to speak for the first month or so. Hitomi coaxes words from him one by one until he becomes a veritable torrent of confidence. Sometimes he wonders if he has, perhaps, gone too far. But when the newly-christened Toki grins at him in a way he would have thought unimaginable just months before he can't help but indulge him with a smile in return. Toki's confidence continues to grow as he moves up from Code:06 to Code:05 and then to Code:04 and eventually he no longer needs a teacher. Hitomi watches as Toki's eyes grow colder and, eventually (as is true for all of them) lose their light. He still speaks, yes, still smiles. But the words he says are false and the smiles are hollow. One afternoon Hitomi is awoken by the sound of Kanda's and realizes that he has not seen Toki in nearly a month.

The third is more an adult than a child. She is confident and holds her head high, laughing and joking. Hitomi tries to befriend her but she is returned to the ground before a week goes by.

Four more clocks on the wall and Hitomi has almost given up. There is no point in mentoring children if they are killed, stolen, or leave of their own volition. But Ogami Rei does not leave. Ogami stays with him even when he naps. Ogami watches him and mimics him and learns but does not become him. Ogami stays by his side up until the day that the wind across empty patches of graveyards and the ticking of his clock become too loud to ignore and he, for once, is the one to leave.


	23. Open and Shut

Hitomi had been told that it would be a simple mission and that was the sole reason that he had taken it. He'd been told that it was a simple open-and-shut case; go to the south, stop some assassins who'd slunk into the country, and take a well-deserved nap. And it had been open, and was halfway to 'and' when the ice shards came.

He hadn't been warned of the possibility of power users becoming involved in the mission, particularly hostile ones. He hadn't been warned though he later suspected that someone, namely Heike, had known exactly who he'd find there. His failure to notify him was likely some sort of mean-spirited jab.

There was ice; ice everywhere and Hitomi would be damned if he had any idea where it came from. Shards went left and right and a few embedded themselves in his back. It was the sort of warning shot that said 'I am warning you that I am going to kill you soon. I am warning you by punching five moderately-sized holes through your ribcage in places that will kill you eventually if left untreated. It was, in short, only a warning shot to those like the person firing it.

The mercenarys' protector called himself Yukihina. No surname, no précis, just a name and another flurry of ice. Hitomi cocked a wrist and invited Yukihina down to trade blows more directly but Yukihina kept his distance. Ice covered the wall below him; too slippery for Hitomi to climb. Apparently Yukihina was erring on the side of caution; he did not want to be too close to his opponent and he could afford to attack from afar judging by the strength of his remote blows. Unfortunately for him Hitomi was just as suited for long-range attacks as he was. Lightning laced the sky and globes of water fell from the clouds only to crystalize and expand.

It wasn't the sort of battle that Yukihina often shared with Heike though Hitomi had no way of knowing that. The fighting didn't drag on for days at a time; it lasted minutes. A few well-placed bolts of electricity melted a path to Yukihina's feet and it was only a matter of time before Hitomi was upon him. While sleeping was his favorite pastime he was far from slow in battle; he'd climbed the ranks and rightfully earned his place as the first among the Code:Breakers. As number one he expected to have difficult missions and had, in the past, gone through many, however he could not recall ever having to face an opponent quite as strong as Yukihina. He suspected that he would meet more powerful ones in the future, provided he survived this battle. While he was confident in his abilities he was not sure how far they would go against this man or how long his powers would last. In the end endurance was what terminated the fight. His opponent was, apparently, an expert at preserving his power in battle (he would only find out later that Heike was the reason for this) while Hitomi was not. He sensed that he was close to his lost form and therefore losing. While most could at least run when they lost their powers, he had no such option. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, Kanda and her 'friends' had arrived and had a small army's worth of artillery aimed at Yukihina before Hitomi even hit the ground.

They met again many times. Sometimes they would cooperate (though Hitomi never knew why) but mostly they fought (and Hitomi didn't really understand the reasons for that either). When it came time for Eden and Hitomi to go their separate ways he thought he saw, on his way out the door, a dark-skinned man nod approvingly from the corner of his eye. When he turned to look there was no one there.


	24. Waltz

Sakurakouji hadn't bothered to ask for his name but he didn't really care. He knew hers and he only ever needed to call her; he never needed to ask for himself, particularly in her presence. They'd only met recently; the sun dappled shade had hidden her eyes and he hadn't seen them until a good turn of the sun after they'd met. She wasn't bubbly, nor was she sad. Solemn didn't seem quite the word either, though he hated to describe her as blank. Nothing filled the space behind her eyes and she did not smile. Her presence was nothing; when she stepped nary a twig snapped, when the wind blew it hardly caught her hair, when she spoke it was silent and he had to struggle to catch her words.

A ghost had found him playing in the forest and he, curious, had invited her to join him.

Trust did not come easily; not to him, nor to her. They danced around each other in a cautious game while they 'played' with sticks and stones, neither making the first move, not for lack of courage but for some indescribable reason that neither could put a face to. It was a feeling that, if they were to become close, if they were to play a game meant for fun and not one meant to test, that something would start that neither of them could stop or control. It wasn't fear, it was hesitation; knowing that calling her "Sakura" instead of "Sakurakouji" would set off a land slide. Two small pebbles would start it but each would knock another two or four or eight or ten out of place and each of those pebbles would displace another twenty and the number would grow exponentially until the entire word was covered in stone.

A waltz, however, could not last forever as the dancers would eventually become fatigued and withdraw from the stasis of the music-driven movement. Three weeks after they'd met she asked his name and he gave it in return for the use of hers.


	25. Haimish

Toki was aware, far in advance, that this sort of thing would happen. He'd known that Sakura and Rui were going on a bit of a retreat and that Shibuya had gone with them for added protection and he knew all too well what that meant for meals. There would be no one to cook at Shibuya mansion that night; it would be Ogami, him, and Yuuki left to fend for themselves in the cold and desolate wilderness. Well, that metaphor was a bit extreme. Her highness had left several piles of distinct ingredients with meticulous instructions behind for the reluctant trio to make some sort of easy dish or another. Peppers and meat and various other foodstuffs littered the countertop and Toki found himself staring at them without much hope.

Ogami had cheerfully offered to make them a meal straight from the cans in the back of the pantry but Toki, with his aristocratic tongue, had vetoed the offer immediately. Yuuki had watched in apathetic stasis. The next option had been to ask Heike; while Toki was not entirely sure that he lived there, it was worth a try. He knocked on the door next to Yuuki's and, much to his surprise, did find Heike behind it. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the gleeful look Heike gave him at the prospect of cooking removed him from the list of viable chefs.

Toki briefly entertained the idea of ordering out; he was not known for his cooking ability and God (or more likely the devil) knew what monstrosity of a meal Yuuki would create. Unfortunately Rui had made it clear that if any of the food she'd left out was wasted skulls would crack and heads would roll. Rui never bluffed.

His options exhausted, Toki decided that it was his turn to attempt to cook; it was going on seven at night and Yuuki was complaining, quite loudly, that if he was not given food soon he would make the meal himself. Toki was not willing to risk that.

Half an hour later, with Yuuki's voice several decibels higher, Toki had little to show for his effort but a pile of charred vegetables and was willing to do just about anything to get Yuuki to shut up and get some food in his stomach. It was a great moment of weakness, he would say later. He was starving, he was tired, and his ears hurt like hell. He could not be held accountable for his actions, particularly the part where he gave Yuuki control of the kitchen. It was only logical, he insisted, that he evacuated the room immediately after.

There was smoke.

There was fire.

There were, perhaps, several inexplicable explosions.

Strange smells and odd sounds drifted out of the kitchen and not even Heike dared to investigate whatever was idly bubbling upon Shibuya Mansion's stove. Minutes passed or perhaps it was hours- to Toki it felt like days- before Yuuki emerged, an oven mitt perched upon his head and a hissing pot restrained with both hands. "Dinner's done." he said and Toki thought that he'd never been so terrified by those words in his entire life. Hands, Heike's hands, grabbed his wrists and pulled him into the kitchen.

The food that greeted Toki's plate was, much like Yuuki, haimish in nature. It did not sparkle and gleam as it would if it had been prepared by Tenpouin's legion of private chefs, nor did it bubble and skirr across the plate as Toki had expected; it merely sat there looking mildly unappetizing but mostly unassuming. It was now well past nine and Toki would gladly describe his current condition as "starving." Starving was not, however, enough justification to eat something that Yuuki had made, particularly something that looked like a brown lumpy mass on his plate. The dish was not moving of its own volition at the moment but that didn't mean that it wasn't napping.

But Yuuki was not the sort to let his effort be wasted and his tactless stares eventually wore Toki down. He scooped some of the offending foodstuff onto a spoon and stared at it. This seemed to please Yuuki, but not completely placate him. His gaze remained fixed somewhere just to the left of Toki's head. The spoon closed a distance that felt like miles between his plate and his mouth and, without a moment of hesitation, he took a bite.

And then he took another.

And another.

He wasn't sure why he hadn't realized it sooner; Yuuki never had to try to succeed in anything and cooking was no exception.


	26. Bubble

Yukihina is on watch tonight. Yukihina is, in fact, on watch every night. He does not really mind it though. It's not that Seeker is a man without empathy, though many would testify that he certainly acted like it. It is practical to make the one who needed no sleep, and could likely not sleep at all, the watch and Yukihina never complains.

Bullets whizz overhead and to the sides, sometimes passing through the open window and other times dropping on impact with the stone wall that guards them. The Re:Codes always sleep in a warzone whether it be metaphorical or literal. Tonight is the latter. It is deadly outside from weapons and weather; sleet soaks the air in dreaded cold. It is a wonder that neither side has backed down from fighting. They are trapped here as long as bullets buzz by like angry wasps and Yukihina does not mind that either.

There's a little bubble of warmth here in these ruins; a little bubble of home in the field of battle in the form of a bundle of blankets on the floor. He has not been invited. Hiyori protested when Kouji suggested it. "He doesn't just have cold feet!" she'd insisted, wrapped in a rare scrap of fleece. "He's cold all over! It's like sleeping with an ice man!" Kouji and Rui made several more attempts to secure him a place under the blankets but he had not backed them and the campaign ended in a fizzle.

Yukihina has been banished from the blankets and been told to watch and so he does.

Seeker is in the center of it all; he always is. They are there for his sake. Yukihina had been amused at first (he'd been 'on watch' many, many times before) but has now come to accept it as a matter of course. Lily is off to Seeker's right, his arm in hers, pressed up against his side as if she intends to melt into him in the warmth the blankets retain. Sometimes, when they are in safer places, it seems as if she is trying to seduce him. Occasionally he humors her and sometimes he does not. Here though, in the middle of a battle, she only seems like a scared little girl clinging to her favorite doll. Kouji sleeps to Seeker's left, one arm folded over his stomach and the other thrown to the side, over Seeker's torso. The back of his hand has fallen on Lily's waist but it had landed long after both fell asleep and neither seem to notice. Rui is there as well, lying on her side and leaning heavily on Kouji; something she'd never do when awake. Hiyori is curled in her arms, a kinked thumb hovering just in front of her lips. It is somewhat like a mother and her child would be if they were the sort for family. Ryuuji and Sendou snore loudly to Lily's right and Shigure sleeps sitting upright propped against Ryuuji's vast shoulders. Uesugi lies over their feet making the circle complete.

Even if Yukihina had been allowed to rest with the others he sees no place for himself there. He is the watch dog and his duty is to protect and he is content with that. The time for sleep is not now; he will rest when he lives again.


	27. Desiccate

Sometimes Rei likes to pretend that he remembers the old days; the days when his mother was still alive. The days before his brother became his father. The days when he awoke in the morning to birds not gun shots.

Rei remembers the days with new clothes and smiles and ice cream. Now are the days of rags and chains and war. Sometimes he wonders where and when things went so wrong. He has yet to know decades but he feels them in the time that's passed between now and then.

Sometimes they two are alone and they walk through marketplaces with strange languages and eat foods that Rei has never seen and cannot hope to pronounce. Sometimes there are others; a tall man he knows only as Yukihina who speaks little and smiles less. Other times there is Kouji, another man of few words, who will occasionally slip him a treat or two behind his brother's back. He thinks he likes Kouji until he sees him kill. It is brutish and vicious and entirely animal and Rei never accepts his kindness again.

Those years are times of little speech; he hardly talks to his brother and never speak to those people that he thinks may be his brother's friends. One day he awakens to find that he can barely hear his own voice, desiccated from disuse. There is no choice but to go on though; there never has been. His brother keeps him close. If he does leave he has Kouji or Yukihina stay behind to watch him. There is no moment of freedom and if there were Rei would be helpless regardless; they stick to foreign countries with little government and less safety. His brother knows that Rei is only a child and has no hope of escaping a warzone where he does not speak any of the ambient languages. The chains are a mere formality.

But he keeps looking- seeking some method of escape. And sometimes, in those odd times when he's given up, he can't help but wonder why his brother is so desperate to keep him around.


	28. Cobweb

Ogami was not quite sure what to make of it.

He couldn't say that he'd ever really known Yukihina. He'd never exactly spoken to him though he had seen him several times a year as a child. His visits varied in length from minutes to months depending on what his brother had called him for.

He did not know Yukihina but he'd certainly gotten an impression of him. It was far from complete and he would not say he knew him as well as he knew, say, Toki or Sakura, but he had thought that he had a general understanding of who he was and how he acted. That understanding had held true for quite a while and his trust in his assessment did not waver. Yukihina was a heartless man. He had no emotion, nor compassion. No consideration for others even, at times, for his brother. Ogami didn't like Kouji because he was a monster; he hated Yukihina because he was a machine.

Or he should have been- That was how it should have been. But all those "should have been"s and "could have been"s were falling apart in the wake of Yuuki and Yukihina's combined assault on all his preconceptions.

He'd thought, perhaps, that Yukihina offering to carry an injured Yuuki was a fluke- that their friendliness had been based on nothing more substantial than their mutual dislike of Heike. Then again even mutual hatred seemed a bit too little to justify a friendship like theirs. If there was one thing that he knew about Yuuki it was that he had a strong sense of justice and if there was one thing that he knew about Yukihina it was that he was a cold hearted killer. Logically they should have wanted nothing to do with each other. But here they were now in the yard of Shibuya mansion, doing something that for lack of a better word might be considered playing. Yukihina had a pile of stones by his side- they'd apparently been gathered from the edges of the garden and varied widely in size and shape from flat pebbles to large round rocks. He'd lob one into the air and Yuuki would pounce, catching the stone with some sort of acrobatic flourish. The rocks would then be returned to the garden and the cycle would start anew.

Ogami estimated that he'd arrived about halfway through their game and, though the pile of rocks was still a respectable size, they didn't seem bored nor did they show any signs of stopping. He'd come to call them in for dinner but had found himself transfixed by their play; utterly baffled and completely speechless.

For once it seemed that Yuuki didn't notice him; he was too concerned with catching the rocks that Yukihina threw to care that his precious Sixth was waiting. It was a bit uncharacteristic of him but then again this seemed even more bizarre considering Yukihina. The man himself had noticed Ogami- he glanced over to him every once in a while when Yuuki spun through the air but always returned to watching him. It seemed that he didn't want to interrupt Yuuki's fun.

It was like he was seeing a whole new man before his very eyes. That was the easiest solution; Yukihina had changed utterly and completely after the death of Code:Seeker. Perhaps his death had shaken something loose inside that mass of hateful dead flesh. Maybe the passing of the man he'd worked with for years had fixed something broken inside him. But a simple explanation wasn't always the right one. Ogami was not an expert in human psychology and even if he was he would be hard-pressed to call someone like Yukihina human. But he'd been watching over the past few days. Watching and waiting and wondering and it became clear before long that nothing about Yukihina, nothing at all, had changed. Yuuki had not carved a new path to whatever served at his heart; he'd just found an old one. One that was, perhaps, full of cobwebs and dust, but a path all the same. He'd tilted his head at the wall that was Yukihina and, from that angle, seen a crack there that no one else had, and found a little love inside. Just like Yuuki, wasn't it? Just like the third to find something hidden in plain sight; something that it had likely taken Kouji years to spy.

Yukihina's pile of rocks finally depleted itself. The dead man stood and Yuuki ran to him, excited to hear his new friend's opinion on his acrobatic stunts. Yukihina put his hands on his companion's shoulders and turned him in Ogami's direction. Rather than being startled or embarrassed that he hadn't noticed him until then, Yuuki only seemed happy. He dragged Yukihina back to the doorway.

"Dinner's ready." Ogami informed him though the food was likely cold by now.

"Thanks, Sixth. Come on Yukinko. I'm hungry."

Yukihina's eyes briefly met Ogami's and he thought that maybe, just maybe, he noticed a little flicker of life- of compassion there- for the very first time. But the moment passed just as quickly as it came and Ogami was left to wonder, once again, if it had even really happened.


	29. Complete

It would be the last dinner that Sakura would spend at home in several months. It was entirely possible that it would be the last dinner that she had at home, or at least this particular home, for the rest of her life.

Sakurakouji Goutoku, well-aware of this, had decided that it called for a feast. Sakurakouji Yuki and some of their family friends had spent a good portion of the day in the kitchen while Goutoku himself had attempted to clean the house. He'd gotten about half the dining room set up for a large group when he'd collapsed and Yuki, adorably concerned in her newest cosplay (a Lolita chef's uniform- bought just for the occasion), had forced him to return to bed until dinner. If he was still too sick to stand by then they'd strap him upright at the table- he'd made her promise.

By the time Sakura had arrived, the entire family was waiting for her, the family being Yuki, Goutoku, and a few score of their closest friends. She didn't seem surprised to see them there because they were family too. Perhaps they were not related by blood, but she was not related by blood to her father or mother; these friends had been just as present through her childhood as her parents, and were just as much family as anyone else. This family here was whole and complete and soon Sakura would be leaving it.

Yuki and Goutoku had known this would happen for a long time. They'd known it ever since Sakurako had placed Sakura in their care. She was certainly their daughter- there would be no doubting that. However, she lived in a different world than them: a darker one than even the yakuza. It had come sooner than they'd expected but it was time for her to go back now. They'd see her again at some point but they wouldn't be her parents anymore; she'd found a new family now.


	30. Destruction

It had been a week since Toki had moved into the hospital. He'd taken his meager possessions, several changes of clothes, a video game or two, and a pencil and paper just in case she couldn't speak when she woke up. The Prime Minister (he refused to call him his father) had laughed and Toki wondered what, exactly, he thought was funny.

He'd found the two of them in a land of destruction- poor little Toki clinging to his bleeding sister because he couldn't do a thing- hadn't even tried.

The chair by her bed was plastic- a folding chair. No one was expected to stay there for long. He sat there, digging his nails into his thighs to distract from the pain in his ass and the thoughts in his head, for almost a full day. He eventually had to leave it if not for the sake of his shrinking stomach, for the good of his screaming bladder.

He continued on that way for two days. Sometimes his father was there, sometimes he was not. He had more important things to worry about than an injured nonexistent and an unnecessary son. Heike Masaomi hovered around the room like a wraith for an hour and left. Toki was not sure if his visit was a token gesture or if maybe, just maybe, seeing Nenene like that was too much for him to bear. Toki was the only one who waited. He waited and waited and waited and when the body under the sheets finally opened her eyes he was the first one at her side. "Hey. Are you alright? Can you hear me? Sis?" He had the pen and paper at hand just in case. Just in case he'd never hear his sister's voice again.

A newborn's eyes turned to stare and her lips parted. "Who are you?"

And Toki had no answer. He left the pen and paper in her care; he had something to discuss with his father.


	31. Amaranthine

It may very well have been love at first sight for Sakurako but for Shibuya it took a bit longer than that. He wasn't the sort to fall in love over a period of minutes or hours and, if it had been anyone but Sakurako, it would have taken at least a few months. As it was, he agreed to marry her several weeks after she proposed. Saying "no" to Sakurako was more difficult than it initially appeared.

The initial proposal had been just as confusing as it had been sudden and he hadn't dignified it with a response; he'd assumed that it was a joke. Two house calls, five letters, three invitations to dinner, and one close-call with a sword later it occurred to him that maybe she had been serious.

The next time he received a letter he agreed to take her to dinner.

And then again.

And then again.

After the first date he would try to wait several days between their outings but every day without fail Sakurako would show up at his door around five, decked out in a new dress or kimono, and inform him that he was going to take her out.

They went everywhere; it began with restaurants but Sakurako became bored and the restaurants became gardens. After the gardens were the movies and after the movies were the plays. They attended festivals and watched sports and ate their way through more than one small town.

Six weeks after he had confronted a stranger about standing on a worm Shibuya was down on one knee with a ring that Sakurako had chosen herself. She asked him if he intended to marry her. Even years after they separated he'd remember heramaranthine smile when he finally said 'yes.'


	32. Spurious

The first time that Toki met Heike was not too long after he had been introduced to the people who would now serve as his family. Heike was, in a way, his family as well though he was not too pleased about the arrangement. Honestly he had little need for a father or a mother or a creepy elder brother. All he had needed was the sister who'd been given to him on that day when he'd been reborn as a son of the Fujiwara household. Despite pounds of seething jealousy that boiled within him he couldn't help but adore his sister. He was not very fond of the man that came with her.

Heike Masaomi introduced himself with a plastic grin and an out-stretched hand. Toki had, reluctantly, taken it. His sister was quite fond of Heike and he had postulated that, if he wished to remain in her good graces, he should try and treat him well. Something about the way he carried himself made Toki incredibly uneasy. Before their hands parted he found himself already wishing that this stranger who always seemed to inhabit their house would leave and never come back. Spurious was what he would call it if given the word; everything about his sister's friend seemed illegitimate and counterfeit. Maybe his eyes held a bit too much age for someone with his face, or perhaps it was the suspect lack of hair on his brows. Maybe it was the flat white of his mop or the uniform that he wore, and would continue to wear, for the next ten years.

Heike seemed sham of a man that shadowed Toki's sham of a family up until the day that Nenene died and Toki took on his new name. Once Toki joined the Code:Breakers, once he threw away that old unwanted family, the Heike he had known disappeared. He was replaced by a man who acted jovial to the point of desperation; a man who never hugged the corners of the prime minister's mansion and spoke only in packets, ropes, and empty words.

And, quite honestly, Toki wasn't sure which he preferred.


	33. Alone

There was very little to keep Inoichi company in the years that she spent behind the doors in the basement of Shibuya mansion. Memories did not do much to fill the void in her little room though she had many to dwell upon. Dolls did not make neural connections nor did they lose them. Inoichi never forgot- not a detail- and often replayed those early memories like movies. She never became particularly bored but her creator had given her some semblance of a human heart and she liked to remember who she was waiting for and why she was watching.

Her memories of her time with Sakura were relatively brief. She liked to go over the good ones inch by inch while she waited, reliving the past in which she was never alone. Sometimes they'd flash across the walls of the basement and others she hugged them close and picked apart every smile and every laugh, looking for something new she'd never seen before. Of course there was nothing she had yet to find, only a handful of memories and she'd been guarding the door for ten years. There had been no new ones and she'd stripped the old ones clean, sucked out all their meaning and sentimentality in the hopes of finding something new to marvel over.

Eventually despairing she went over her jokes- the precious puns that had been left for her and when those ran out she started to count. She was well over seven million when the door opened and the alarm sounded, dragging her out of her room and back into the outside world to see Sakura once again.


	34. Perennial

For the third time that night a spiral of dirtied bandages piled on the floor.

"Stop moving."

Yuuki, face glued in an assertive pout, tensed his muscles in a useless attempt to stop the squirming and shifting his body insisted upon and, after some time, managed to tame his movements. While Yukihina seemed to have a glacier's worth of patience with his restlessness, the slow-healing wounds that covered his arms and head did not. If they were neglected much longer he would likely pass out.

Rui was occupied with attempting to close Toki's rather more severe wounds with another round of bandages and Sakura and Ogami (with Shibuya's help) were likewise engaged. There were probably other people available to change Yuuki's bandages but they couldn't very well go to the hospital with the government watching (Lily and Ikurumi had proven that) and Yukihina had started yanking the bloodstained wrappings off of Yuuki's arms before anyone else had volunteered.

It was slow going. Yukihina wasn't accustomed to being gentle and, though Yuuki tried his best to bear with it, some of the sharper tugs made him jerk in pain. He'd occasionally ask if the ordeal was over but Yukihina would stay silent in favor of winding another wound closed. Yuuki was intelligent enough to figure out the answer on his own and Yukihina knew that the questions were rhetorical.

After nearly half an hour (it could have been faster but Yuuki's agitation had only prolonged the process) the job was done. Pleased to be free and ignoring his wounds, Yuuki hopped to his feet and spun around several times. "Thanks, Yukinko. I'm all better now, see?"

Yukihina made no particular move to stop him. If Yuuki was going to reopen his wounds (and he would- he always did) it was probably better that he did it now while there was a first aid kit nearby. Eventually the stamping and hopping came to an end and, as he packed up what was left of the gauze, he felt two thoughtful eyes focused on his back. "Hey, Yukinko. You should get your bandages changed too." It was said with such calculated concern that Yukihina was caught off guard. The serious Yuuki that had always fascinated him so had made an appearance.

"They're fine." Yukihina replied and clicked the kit closed. Though he wanted to study the juxtaposition between the two sides of his companion (dare he say 'friend'?)'s personality now was not the time nor the place and the mention of his perennial dressings had put him in a bad mood.

In spite of his reassurance, or perhaps irrespective of it, Yuuki's hand reached out to yank his clothing aside in order to get at the aging compress beneath. But it was possible for even Yuuki to go too far or, at least, come too close to a truth that Yukihina himself was not willing to accept. He caught his wrist, gave it a creaking squeeze, and left the room and Yuuki behind for the ease of the empty yard.


	35. Floral

They hadn't come home again today. They hadn't been coming home much lately- apparently everyone was out somewhere and had been staying there for a few nights. The large man in the cat suit had been pacing back and forth and filling his bowl a little too often having apparently forgotten how many times he'd done so already. Puppy supposed that there was no reason to be upset about that. He could eat all he wanted like this- sometimes when the others didn't come home the cat man forgot to feed him at all and he'd have to scavenge around the house. There were plenty of small furry creatures to eat but he didn't like going to the effort of catching them if he could avoid it.

He missed the pretty girl and the angry man- the two who had been taking care of him ever since his mother had died. He hadn't liked the pretty girl at first because she smelled funny. There was the floral smell of her shampoo and the way she smiled and the food she gave him but somehow, beneath all that, there as something that felt wrong about her. She didn't smell like a normal human; there was something there that was like a predator. He hadn't liked it at first but the angry man (he wasn't really angry. No, he just looked it) seemed to like her and so he had tried to trust her and, as it happened, it had been a good decision. She'd taken him in and fed him and had eventually become his primary caretaker despite his initial doubts. But both the angry man and the pretty girl were gone. The boy who acted like an animal had been hurt, as had the angry man, the scary lady, and the one who smelled like smoke, or so he assumed judging by the way the cat man was pacing. He always acted like this when the house started to smell like blood. They were at the place where hurt people went and they would not be back for some time.

And so he'd wait just inside the door for everyone to come back like he always did until everyone came back. But this time some of them never did.


	36. Aestival

Summer was his least favorite season for one reason and one reason only. It was around this time that the aestival bugs came out and began their ceaseless patrol around his lunch box. Food was important enough to him that he based how much he liked any given season off of its implications for his meals. Winter meant warm food and hot drinks. Spring meant cooler food and sometimes ice cream. Fall brought good treats too. Summer- well he supposed he could not complain about the fare but the flies were annoying as hell.

On principle, at the beginning of the season, he'd found himself wishing over and over that summer would just end already and that they could get back to the days that were so cold that the pests did not dare disturb his food. But quite honestly things hadn't turned out so bad. They hadn't been so bad because he'd made a new friend. That friend was named Rei and had blue eyes. He was a little loud and pretty rude and really arrogant but he was hilarious because of it and he liked him. He'd often share his lunches with Rei and the person who'd introduced them; Sakura. He had enough food to feed an army and, though he usually didn't like sharing, he was willing to make an exception for the two of them.

So they'd played and eaten and Rei was more than happy to use his weird blue flames to keep the bugs away. For once he found himself enjoying the hottest season of the year. But as summer turned to fall, things changed with the seasons. Whatever strange tension he'd felt building up among the adults that came to pick up his friends (and his parents as well) and stretched so far it snapped and the next time he saw a flame that burned blue he would look upon it with hatred rather than joy.


	37. Words

Mishiru had no use for words down here in the dark. She had little use for words at all because she hardly ever had to speak. In class, on the odd days that she did bother to attend (it was not a matter of physical distance but rather mental detachment) she never loosed her voice and the teachers did not dare call on her. They had tried once when she had started at Kibou- it had been the third day of school and she'd been asked to come to the front of the room to solve a problem. She had shivered and shaken and hid in her blankets- some of her future admirers had volunteered to go instead however the teacher was having none of it. She insisted and threatened and Mishiru had sunk further and further down in her chair and under her desk with the weight of every word.

The other students had tried to defend her actions. They continued their campaign to impeach Mishiru from her scholarly duty and nominate someone else to solve the offending math problem, but the teacher was unwilling to make an exception. It was still the beginning of the school year, she reasoned, and one moment of leniency would only lead to more chaos and less respect later on. She'd walked down the rows to Mishiru's desk, located in the very back of the classroom, (she'd pitied the girl for her crippling shyness at first but now she wasn't feeling quite as generous) and put a hand on her desk. It was time to stand out in the hall. If that failed then she would be making a one-way trip to the principal's office to see Shibuya.

And Mishiru did indeed fail to cooperate but not in any way that could have reasonably been expected. She bristled and hissed and leapt from her desk. Her departure from the classroom was accompanied by a hailstorm of fragmented glass and a flurry of shrieks.

The instructor, mortified, rushed to the window and looked down. A fleeting form of a remarkably uninjured girl replaced the mirage of a broken body far below that she'd expected. And what was there to do? There would be no bouncing back from that; no reassertion of her authority in the face of self-imposed defenestration. She continued the lesson as best she could and from then on Mishiru came and went as she pleased and was never asked to speak in class again.


	38. Drifting

There were days before Code:Seeker though they're not very easy to remember anymore. There were days before he'd heard of the hybrid and many more stretching backwards into history before there had been a war brewing between the angels and the power users. Kouji doesn't remember them very well to be honest. They seem pretty pale in comparison to the things that are happening now and they were not exactly recent by any stretch of the word.

He likes to think of those days as the good old ones, the ones that he'll talk about if he ever survives to be old and grey, the days from which the stories he'll tell his children will originate. Provided he has any that is. He'd like to. One day. If an appropriate day ever comes, which it likely won't.

In lieu of his maybe-children he decides to tell Toki. He thinks that it might be a very valuable bonding experience that they are sorely in need of. While he does not expect Toki to like him and, in fact, prefers that he hates him, due to their current circumstances and mutual goals he supposes that it is best that they attempt to understand each other. Or at least as much as they can without the true circumstances of Nenene's death coming to life. Maybe he'll tell Toki someday if the circumstances call for it- maybe if Toki chances or he changes or something else falls out of place, but not yet. Not now.

He tries to tell Toki of his drifting days on many occasions but Toki does not want to listen. When approached he makes a noise of vague contempt and struts from the room. He cannot fault him for it because he is partially to blame for what Toki has become, and the distance between them is of his own design. He'd wanted to stop the cycle of revenge from falling upon his comrade- he'd taken on the burden of blame and had, apparently, done too good a job of it. Reconciliation without explanation was impossible and explanation seemed increasingly improbable.

And so, not for lack of a desire to share them, Kouji kept his stories to himself.


	39. Appraise

Lily didn't like the hospital. She didn't like it at all. There were various reasons for this, some trivial, some telling. The smell of the hospital bothered her. It was clean and cutting and seemed to singe the inside of her nose. But underneath the stench of antiseptic she could sense something like pain, desperation, and lacerations. Not only was the stench offensive, it was covering up the truth of the building; hospitals were places of birth and recover but to her they were primarily places of death and injury. The nurses bothered her as well. There was something about the way that they appraised everyone who entered as if they were a piece of broken machinery. After several long years of killing she'd learned that being detached from empathy was not necessarily a bad thing but, for some reason, seeing that sort of attitude in people who were supposed to be saving lives rubbed her the wrong way.

If you were going to be kind, she thought, you might as well see the charade all the way through. Human beings were kind by nature but if they were going to fake it she would have preferred that they at least attempt to act it.

The hospital also made her think of her past and, like many of the people who had defected from society to join the Code:Breakers or the Re:Codes or one of any number of the groups of power users, her past made her very angry. That was why she'd thrown it away. But scent was tied very closely to memory in a knot so complex that even Heike could not sort it out and she couldn't help but let the thoughts and feelings of long-gone days wash over her. She'd spent much of her childhood in the hospital. It had been more her home than her house ever was because the nurses (cold and calculating bitches that they were) were her family and, if she was being honest, she knew the lay out of the hospital room far better than she did her own.

There was the acid on her skin (that she had, to some extent, been able to protect against) and the burns from cigarettes and matches. There had been broken bones and lacerations and psychological damage enough for ten girls her age. She'd been treated for all of those but the care had never really reversed things. There was always some mark and no matter how many times they tossed around the words like "full recovery" or "completely healed" there would always be a scar in her memories and on her body and it was all that she could do to cover them up and try to forget.

Because hospitals promised something- they promised that everything would be better; it would be the same as it always was. The warm smiles of the nurses (even if they were manufactured) and the reassurances of the doctors... Portrayals in movies and talk around the block reinforced the lie but she knew better. Hospitals were not the kind and forgiving place that most thought they were. And she was here to demonstrate that; after all, where better to stage an ambush? Get them while they felt safe in the bubble of lies of full recovery and sanitary atmospheres. Get them while they were weak and injured. Get them and make sure that they would leave the hospital in a coffin. That was what Eden had wanted and they'd entrusted her with this mission. But they hadn't known one thing; Lily hated hospitals. And hating hospitals made her remember.


	40. Patch

If there's a hole in your heart, you've got to pull it together.

But that is, of course, easier said than done. You can't exactly pull a hole together because it's not apart- it just is. It's there, unrelenting, an object in its own lacking. And that's just a little sad because what a hole really needs is not a stitching of two parts of its diameter; it needs a patch. It needs something to cover it and though people always told him to close it up on his own he knew very well that he couldn't.

He was born smart- they all were. Very smart. They'd made him that way and they themselves were quite intelligent to have managed it. Unfortunately none of them had had their genes hand-picked for high IQs and problem solving abilities. He understood much more than they suspected and they had never really grasped the significance of the digits that made up his Wechsler score. It's hard to fathom things that must be measured in numbers because the mind distorts things. They didn't realize that he'd heard their advice, taken it, and discarded it as useless.

Shigure would never get over Makoto's death. That's what he thought anyway. It had been so sudden and so unexpected; he'd had no chance to prepare for it as he'd had chances to prepare for the tests that he'd been given by his teachers. There was no warning, no study guide, no hints at what sort of items would be on the exam. And Makoto was just gone, punching a hole in his heart just as a hole had been punched in his friend's back by that rebar. And that hole did not need stitches to hold it closed as it healed; it needed a patch. But there was none forthcoming.

So he gave up on patching it because there were more important things to do- Code:Breakers to cultivate and anti-Eden organizations to infiltrate and former friends to despise. And among these various duties he did, in fact, find a patch. It was a little worn and a little sad- quite annoying and incredibly chipper. He wasn't sure if he wanted to use it because covering the hole meant that he would be incorporating that patch into his heart and that was simply not an option at first. It would take an idiot and an amateur to take a hold of an enemy and grip her so tightly to heal their own problems and Shigure was neither. And that was why there was a sort of relief in Code:Seeker's demise outside of the usual sort of rush that came from a mission well-worked. It was a relief because, instead of wandering of who knew where with Yukihina and Kouji, Hiyori, that small and battered patch for the hole in his heart, had chosen to treat her inevitable loneliness with him. And for that he was grateful even if he didn't understand it. There were many things that made perfect sense to him but how someone he could use would be able to get some use out of him as well was not one of them. After all, pencils did not get any benefit from writers did they? No, they became smaller and their lifespan shrank. Of course he knew of symbiotic relationships in theory but thinking that one could exist within his own limited social sphere was almost inconceivable.

But there she was- his patch and the one companion that had stayed with him, fiercely loyal, for the past several years, still by his side. And he supposed that he was happy about it. Happy for the first time in a long time because the little bits of joy in his life were no longer leaking out of the hole in his heart- because she'd stopped them and trapped them there until they could build up a pile of positive emotion the likes of which he hadn't experienced in years. It was not outright elation- just a tiny flutter under the heart and a sneaking tug at the edge of his lips. But it was there all the same and he had a sinking feeling that, for as long as Hiyori kept her hands on that leak, it would grow.


	41. Awareness

When Makoto awoke from his long, long nap he thought that he heard someone calling him, or even screaming. Conscious awareness came slowly- the first few moments of wakefulness were permeated by a fog that would not dissipate no matter how hard he tried to push it out. There was only a vague feeling of concern.

There had been voices when he slept; two familiar ones that had gradually distorted and deepened with age. If it were not for this sort of semiconscious awareness he might not have recognized the source of the screams. It was Yuuki- Yuuki whom he'd managed to save and Yuuki who had, no matter how busy he was nor how much it hurt him, visited him at least three times every week for the past however many years. Of course Makoto had no way of knowing this in such acute detail. There was only the vague feeling that Yuuki and Shigure had stopped by and that they were safe and sound.

And now that he was awake and alert he was in a position to recognize the voice that was calling. It was indistinct and unclear- though it was obviously incredibly loud at the source, here in his room its volume was barely above a whisper. It was Yuuki and Yuuki was screaming. There was no way of knowing why he was doing it- if he was fighting, in pain, or simply being Yuuki. But all the same, Makoto felt a strong urge to send him a message. In a rather unexpected but deeply appreciated turn of events he realized that he had a means of communication tucked under his hands- he couldn't move to find another one. His entire body felt strange and any attempt to pick up the object resting on his chest, much less push himself upright, was futile. But he could, at the very least, move his fingers and the thing under them was familiar enough; he was overcome with some certainty that Yuuki had left it there and that he would be listening for it no matter what else was happening.

_Yuuki_

Tapping out the first few letters was excruciating but as each went by it became a little easier. There was a voice above him- Shigure's. He would talk to him later and he was happy that he was visiting, but for right now he wanted to send a message to Yuuki.

_I can hear your voice. I know how kind hearted you are, more-so than anyone else. _

And he would need to hear that because he knew that, no matter what anyone would say, he was weighed down by a huge amount of guilt. Yuuki was something else- despite his flippant nature he cared a great deal about others but he tended to forget the good things he did (like trying to save those people) in favor of feeling awful for things he had no control over.

_Come visit me with more friends next time, okay?_

_You're my important friend._

_So stay with me forever and ever, alright?_

It was an innocuous message- rather inane probably. Makoto was unaware of how long he'd been asleep though he was under the impression that it had been a while- outside of being unable to move his body it felt strangely big and the change in his friend's voices was nothing if not indicative, and couldn't be sure why Yuuki was screaming. There was a feeling that he needed to hear from him more than anything else and so he'd spoken. But now he was exhausted. As much as he wanted to communicate with Shigure, he didn't think he was capable of tapping out another letter. He'd been in stasis for a long, long time and he thought that Shigure would understand. And so he drifted off back into the comforting maze of unconsciousness where he'd resided for the past several years with the hope that it would last a few hours rather than weeks, months, or years.


	42. Inventory

Doing inspections of the main factory with President Tenpouin was always an interesting experience. Interesting was not, in this case, a good thing. It was the sort of use of the word that came with gritted teeth and forced smiles. You could not insult the president of the Tenpouin group. He was simply too powerful and even though he was unlikely to care himself, someone else would.

They had to grin and bear with his antics through the entire time. While a child was a good thing to have as far as creativity was concerned, someone with Yuuki's disposition was not very well suited for a leadership role. He'd arrive between two hours and two weeks late to the inspection, having gotten lost or distracted along the way, and once he arrived he'd be taken into custody by two of the higher-ups who had a fair amount of experience dealing with his eccentricities.

They'd start by looking over the finished inventory if only because Yuuki would rush there the second the tour was set to begin and, when Yuuki was running somewhere, no one had any hope of catching up until he arrived at his destination. By the time his escort arrived toys were flying throughout the room and everything was a hopeless mess. Invariably, the second they reached him he'd have lost interest in the place and was ready to go on to the next location. From there he'd skip around the factory in a completely arbitrary order, ignoring manufacturing sequence, speaking to the workers, and playing around with half-finished merchandise.

Once again, Yuuki's sense of timing was haphazard at best and downright random at worst. The ordeal could last anywhere from half an hour to half a day and occasionally they'd have to kick him out for the sake of productivity. As embarrassing as it was to toss your boss out of his own factory it was a necessity. He had the sort of personality that not only disrupted work- it decimated the work ethic of all of those around him. What was the point of staring at an assembly line when the owner of the company you worked for was rolling across the floor in hot pursuit of an errant dust bunny? They'd drag him out, throw him back into the hands of his handlers (or just onto the pavement if his handlers weren't there. A cellphone with a built-in GPS did very little good when lost or broken), and try to straighten out the damage in time to achieve _something_.

But they never did. Not when President Tenpouin came to visit.


	43. Babysitting

Hello everyone! First and foremost I want to thank you all for all of the wonderful comments you've been leaving! They really brighten up my day every time and I really, really appreciate them! That you would take the time to leave me comments means quite a lot!

Now, as for this drabble (and perhaps some others after it…) I'm afraid the recent chapters have left me with little inspiration and the things that do inspire me… Well, we just don't have enough information on that stuff yet for me to write too much! And so I've decided to try my hand at a few AUs- this being one of them. I'll try to remember to label the AUs but I might forget. They should usually be pretty obvious though… I think. Anyways, on with the drabbles!

It was approximately five in the afternoon and Yuuki Tenpouin was already sleeping as if he'd been sedated. It wasn't as if Yukihina hadn't been tempted to sedate him in the short period of time that he had been awake. He'd been asked to babysit the kid and, while he was nothing close to the sort of person who should be chosen to look after children, he was out of a job and rather desperate. While he wished that the world didn't spin on an axis of money, and that his old friend Kouji could have found some more suitable form of employment, he had to take what he could get.

Admittedly it was no normal babysitting job. The kid was something special- some new form of technology, a pinnacle of genetic engineering, a super weapon. Something like that; no one had really briefed him on the details. They hadn't thought it important or perhaps he just wasn't far up enough in whatever kind of mess this was to know. He wasn't sure if the secrecy had to do with some sort of government project or if it was something incredibly and awfully illegal (Kouji had hands in both the underworld and the military) but he didn't particularly care. He'd never been known for his morality. He did the job that was given to him and that was it.

And, out of all the jobs he'd done, this was by far the most difficult. He knew how to deal with bullets. He was well-aware of how to kill a man and how best to extract information from a prisoner of war. He'd been a cop in the past, before everything had gone to hell; he'd apprehended the worst of the criminals and then he'd become one. And now here he was, having trouble babysitting one damn kid.

Things had started out well. He'd been introduced to the child and had thought that it would be an easy because the kid loved him. The instant the exchange of names was over the little redhead had run over and latched on to his leg like a koala or something similar. Yukihina hadn't known what to make of him at the time but he was optimistic. He'd limped over to the nearest couch, sat down, and waited. Eventually his employers left and his charge extracted himself with surgical precision from his shin and lay down on the floor. He'd rolled around a bit at speeds that Yukihina had never observed outside of a motorized vehicle (but then again he supposed this was no ordinary kid and it didn't much bother him) and then come to a rapid halt. That was when things had begun to get strange.

Yukihina was not overly troubled by seeing children do things that, by all logical reasoning, they should have been incapable of doing. Seeing a six year old zip around at a speed his eyes could barely follow was not particularly disturbing, nor was the sheer amount of food that Yuuki managed to pack away afterwards. He wasn't bothered by how he managed to jump halfway up to the second story, catch the stairway's railing, and drag himself the rest of the way up. The way he could lift a toy roughly his height was of little to no consequence. It was how, in those few moments after he'd first come to a halt, Yuuki looked at him with the eyes of someone much older and asked him a question. "Who's Masaomi?"

He supposed that it was possible that Yuuki had heard the name from one of his caretakers- where they would have gotten it was a mystery. Masaomi Heike was the one who'd gotten him booted from the police force. There had been an undercover operation- those were his specialty. The details were meaningless. All that mattered was that, when the mission was over, he'd been arrested along with the rest of the criminals. Or, well, they'd tried to arrest them. But he was not going to let that happen so easily. He'd escaped and become the very thing he'd reviled all because some very important paperwork had been lost and that paperwork had been in the care and cabinet of one Captain Masaomi Heike.

But that was not an answer that he could easily give a child. It was not an answer that he was willing to give anyone but Masaomi himself just before he slipped a blade into that cavernous gap that he liked to call a heart. "No one important." He'd replied- or something along those lines. And Yuuki had frowned and grabbed his hand.

"I hate him."

Yukihina apprised the subject of his latest monetary venture. The child, innocent and pure while simultaneously world-weary and monstrous, looked back without fear. And then the moment was over and he left to resume his playful conquest of the living room while Yukihina looked on.


	44. Banned

Here, have another AU. I'm not exactly sure what sort of universe this is set in. Perhaps it's if something went slightly differently along the way. Or a few things. Or somewhere completely unrelated to the Code:Breaker's normal universe. In any case…

There was something special about the grocery when you were alone. There was nothing but food as far as the eye could see. Maybe it was because it was reminiscent of lands made of candy that she'd heard of when she was little or just that the sweets seemed to stretch on forever in their own little aisle of eternal sugar. Maybe it was that no one really expected anything from you in a grocery. As long as you seemed to know where you were going no one would bother you. Outside of openings and closings there was no limit on the amount of time you could spend stalking the aisles.

Well, of course, those things only applied when you were alone. Nenene was not alone today. She was with an old, old friend of hers who had decided that he was going to spend the night at her house because he just so happened to be in town. In typical Heike style he had only informed her of his intrusion two days before and she had, in turn, stated that he would be doing no such thing. Confident but having no basis for her security she had failed to pick up enough food for two on her last trip to the store. But Heike had arrived and, as stubborn as she was, she'd never been able to say no to that face. (The voice, yes, but not the face.) And now they were here, at the grocery store, and Heike was strutting around as if he owned the place, a book of questionable nature cradled in the hand that wasn't gesticulating wildly. There was no time for her usual meandering. It took all of the energy that she had to keep her long-time companion from getting them permanently banned from the establishment.

But she had to admit that it was fun. It had been a long time since she'd had the opportunity to go shopping with someone else and, while shopping with Heike was never relaxing, somehow the difficulties made it entertaining. Whether it was intentional or not, he always made her life interesting and she thought that she liked it that way. Well, at least for now. For now she'd let him stay.


	45. Rain

If he was being honest with himself, he didn't much like the rain. Why? Well, that was a very complicated question that would take decades to answer and nearly a hundred years to fully form. Rain was a life-giving thing. What was to hate about rain? It fell from the sky. It was necessary for existence, it bothered him somehow. It bothered just about everyone because it inconvenienced them. He liked the storms- not everyone did. Most people hated the sudden jolt that came with thunder but he appreciated the noise because of the lightning.

Before his hate had had much of a reason he had simply disliked rain because it was accompanied by clouds. While they were quite pleasant to look at he despised the way that they blocked the sun. Yes, he was biased. He was Heike Masaomi and he loved the light that the sun provided. He loved the light because he controlled the light and that power that could morph and form and sharpen the light was made up of his very life force. His life was light and light was his life. So he hated clouds. And the darkest clouds that he hated the most were the ones that accompanied rain. It was more hatred by association than malice towards the rain itself to be honest. That was how it started.

Things had changed for a bit- he'd liked rain for a short period of time because he associated it with someone who was close to him. How close? Well, that was difficult to remember in the face of their current relationship. He'd liked the rain because it was soft and gentle and cool on a warm day. He'd liked it because, on top of that, it was strong. When it really began to pour it could wash away almost anything. Quiet and peaceful yet powerful from time to time when it wanted to be, just like the man that he called a comrade.

Then things had gone sour. There'd been a betrayal. (But who'd been betrayed and who had done the betraying? He couldn't even remember these days. He remembered more than Yukihina but, honestly, not much.) Something had gone horribly wrong or horribly right and the next time it rained he found himself despising precipitation once again.


	46. Fishing

Days were busy now that the mansion was filling up. Rui could still remember the early days but it was hard sometimes- hard because the time when she had to remember was often interrupted by Yuuki crashing into this or Sakura breaking that. The poor girl didn't know her own strength. It wasn't that she minded their trouble- she hadn't had a family in quite a long time and, though she could have considered the Re:Codes one, they weren't exactly the type that she'd longed for. There was something in her that ached for stability and the life that they lead was far from stable as evidenced by her current absence from Code:Seeker's side. Things changed, time sped on, and people came and went. The only constant was Seeker himself. So her second family was here instead.

She was good at getting away when she had to. If she woke up early enough she could finish her chores, clean the place, set out breakfast, and head out to the stream to go fishing. It was a past time that she'd always enjoyed- Kouji had taught her how. Sometimes she used it to catch unworthy crooks and beat the fight out of them but these days she just didn't have the energy- so she cast her line for fish.

And the fish would bite eventually, but she didn't really care about that part. She fished for the peace of mind, not for a meal; while the fish could be considered a reward by some, to her the real reward was a chance to reminisce.

Her past was far from a happy one though she was sure that she could say the same about just about everyone she knew. That didn't mean that she didn't treasure it though. Some time after the fire she had come to terms with what had happened. Of course it would never be alright, and she would never forget the pain, but she was now able to look back upon the fond memories without letting the painful ones taint them. That is, if she had peace and quiet. Maybe she was trapped in the past, but there was nothing wrong with that as far as she was concerned, nothing wrong with dwelling on it as long as you didn't let it hold you back. She didn't think that she did, at least not very much. There was nothing to hold her back anyway except the house she'd left behind. Sometimes she would go there as well, just to try to catch another memory that she'd forgotten long ago behind the dresser or under the stairs.

If she did she'd take them fishing with her.

And she and her memories would sit and watch the line float by until dawn turned to day.


	47. Finesse

"Kouji."

The door clicked shut behind him as if to punctuate Code:Seeker's inquiring statement. Kouji lifted his head and searched the seedy apartment for his fearless leader. To his right he caught sight of a pair of feet on an overturned barrel attached to legs sheathed in white slacks. Ah, yes. There he was. That uniform of his always stood out. He nodded in acknowledgement- there was some explaining to do on his part but, for now, he wasn't going to bother. Questions would be asked soon enough and that was when he would bother to provide answers if he deemed it necessary.

Code:Seeker paused for a moment before giving voice to his curiosity. "Why have you brought home a little girl?" There wasn't exactly any malice in his voice but his tone wasn't entirely enthusiastic either. Taking an unfamiliar child home was a strange thing to do, and when home was a carefully-prepared and expertly hidden safe house for wandering criminals it was even less acceptable. There was also the mission- he'd been sent out to go save the Hachioujis from whoever was attempting to murder them, not kidnap small children. Unfortunately, things had not gone quite as planned- He thought that Code:Seeker knew that but couldn't see how the situation had gotten from point A to point B.

"This is the eldest daughter of the Hachioujis." Somewhere off in one of the dark corners of the room Yukihina was watching with vague, detached curiosity. Kouji could sense it even if he couldn't see. The room was in the basement of a bar and there was only one small window to let the light in. It illuminated Code:Seeker but little else. "I was too late to save the rest. She's badly hurt." Rustling in the corner- Yukihina was retrieving the first aid kit. Not out of any empathy or concern for the girl of course; it wouldn't do if the only one they'd managed to save died. Neither he nor Kouji were entirely sure why it was so important to save the Hachioujis but they were determined to do what they could to help what was left of them. She would be bandaged as best as they could manage and, once she was well enough, given a new name, a new family, and a new home.

Code:Seeker seemed to instantly understand this as well and he gave a vague nod. "Alright then. She can use the bed. But just until tomorrow- We'll have Shibuya help her."

Kouji nodded and put her down on the ratty mattress that had come with their excuse for a room. Moments later Yukihina materialized out of the darkness and started cleaning the wounds on her arms. He was frighteningly proficient in first aid despite not having much of a use for it. Kouji never asked why.

At some point during the process Code:Seeker stepped out to pay a visit to an old friend- most likely to his former mentor to ask for a favor. Once all of Rui's wounds were tended to Yukihina left as well- if asked he would have mumbled some reason about buying more bandages but Kouji knew that he was just uncomfortable. Neither of them had any idea of how to deal with children. Their lifestyle was not the kind that encouraged development of nurturing tendencies and the only child that they had been in close contact with over the past few years had been Rei. Code:Seeker had dragged him around for quite some time but Kouji was well-aware that, as strong as his boss was, he was far from a paragon of paternal finesse. All the same, someone had to stay behind to watch the girl, and no one else was available to do it. If she happened to wake up before Shibuya returned the next morning, and he sorely wished that she wouldn't, she'd have to make due with him.

He switched on the only light in the room, a clunky electric lantern that was more suited for a camping trip than a hide-out, and sat down to wait. It wasn't long before the unfortunate eldest of the Hachioujis awoke and only seconds past that that Kouji noticed. He was not one for niceties, pity, or subtlety. He told her what had happened and what would happen and when her only reply was a weak grip on his coat he thought it appropriate that he should leave and inform Code:Seeker that she would be well enough to travel in the morning. But she followed him and spoke to him and something in his lock-box of a heart stirred. He ushered her out of the rain into the shelter below and began to formulate an explanation for why she would not be leaving any time soon.


	48. Time Machine

Time travel AU.

Machinery hummed in an ever increasing cacophony of buzzes and creaks. One year. Toki started making a list of all of the things that he hated about Yuuki. One: He couldn't hold on to the same wallet for more than a week at a time. Two: He managed to sound monotone even when he sang.

Somewhere off to his left something beeped. A make-shift seat belt dug into his chest. Five years. Three: He snored in his sleep. He was loud enough to wake not just the dead but the inanimate. Four: How he rolled places instead of walked.

There was a clang and the entire capsule began to vibrate. They were speeding up. Fifty years. Why had he agreed to do this again? Five: How persuasive he was when he wanted to be. Six: The way he looked about six inches to your left when he spoke to you and never met your eyes unless you desperately wished that he wouldn't.

Yuuki hopped up from his chair and started pulling levers, tugging nobs, pressing keys, and guiding cursors around the many interconnected screens. One hundred years. Seven: How all he had to do to get ready in the morning was shake out his hair. Eight: How, three nights out of every week, he left his dorm room to find Yuuki napping in front of his door.

The noise was becoming almost unbearable; he wasn't sure how Yuuki could handle it, what with his naturally sensitive hearing. Maybe he'd grabbed some earplugs or something before they'd 'left'. Five hundred years. Nine: How he hadn't offered him some of the ear plugs he must have had. Ten: Yuuki was smarter than him.

Ten was the reason that pissed him off the most. It was the root of most of his other beefs with the kid. Toki liked being the best at everything and, when he came out second best, he couldn't help but feel rage. This exercise had been one of his many attempts to make Yuuki fail at something for once in his infuriatingly talented life. He'd bet that he could not build a time machine in a week. Of course, time travel was theoretically impossible but, since it was Yuuki trying, he'd felt the need to add in an extra condition to make success impossible.

But three days later he'd tried to push open the door to his apartment only to find a manchild-shaped doorstop blocking his progress. After several ill-advised attempts to wake him, and riding out the terror that followed rousing Yuuki from a nap, he found himself getting pushed, tugged, and prodded down to the parking lot of his apartment complex. A giant heap of welded metal and melted plastic was waiting for him.

He'd let himself be strapped into the strange contraption on the vague and ill-defined hope that, for once in his life, Yuuki had failed. But now, simultaneously three minutes and six hundred years away from that moment, the machine was beeping and humming its way to what he assumed was some sort of halt and Yuuki was staring expectantly at the cobbled mess that he liked to call a door.

Several more seconds passed and the inventor of the first time machine in history, Dr. Yuuki Tenpouin, age fifteen, yanked the portal open to the past. He hopped out without ceremony or sound bites and looked back to see if Toki would follow. Now five hundred dollars in debt due to a bet that he should have known better than to make, Toki took a step outside and pulled in a deep breath of battlefield.


	49. Monster

Yukihina's arm fell to the floor with a sickening thud. The sound signaled a halt in their battle. Maybe Heike was giving him a handicap (let him- when he won it would be Heike's mistake for being too soft), or maybe he hadn't expected the hit to land. For Yukihina the pause was not out of shock, pain, or horror, but unadulterated rage. The sound had made him angry because he was not shocked. It enraged him because there was no pain. It infuriated him because he was no longer mortified at the loss of a limb. He had become a monster and the final proof of that was how indifferent he was to such a grievous injury.

Rather than taking advantage of Heike's relative inactivity, he turned his back and took the three steps to the hesitantly widening puddle of blood in which his trusty right hand lay. He picked it up and examined it. There was an odd tugging around the stump that he recognized as an indication that it would reattach itself soon if left to its own devices. In seconds he'd be whole again as if the injury had never occurred. It made him sick.

He turned to find Heike just the same as he had been; the man had some strange standards for battle, at least where he was concerned. It was like he was waiting for something but Yukihina was never sure what. It pissed him off. When he was angry he rarely bothered to think things through- Kouji and Rui tried to convince him to consider the consequences of his actions but in the heat of the moment he rarely, if ever, cared. Thinking was hard when all his brain seemed to want to bother with was deep and crushing hatred that had been forming for as long as he could remember. He ratcheted hid good arm back a few notches and threw.

Yukihina's severed arm made contact with Heike's face and knocked him a step backwards in a sickening cacophony of splatters. Neither of them spoke for a moment. Heike wiped the blood from his face, unmasking a look of utter disgust. His expression only served to fuel Yukihina's rage. "Repulsive isn't it? Inhuman!" Years had passed since he'd last raised his voice this much. "You did this. You turned me into this!"

Heike didn't even bother to look at him- he seemed to be studiously examining the bloodstain on his precious restriction coat, no doubt lamenting its impeccable cleanliness. Anything to avoid looking at the monster he'd created. Disgust was surely the reason for his neglect. The only other option was guilt, and there was no chance that that was why he refused to meet his eyes. This was Masaomi Heike, one of the four founders of Eden. The Founders did not feel guilt. They were too old and had hurt far too many people to bother with such petty and time-consuming things as that.

"Look at me! You did this, so look at me!" Yukihina roared, closing the distance between them and retrieving the limb he'd so carelessly thrown away. He swung it at Heike's head and it sent a satisfying jerk up his arm when it struck Heike's ear. "Isn't this what you wanted? So, look!" Panting, he took a step back and watched and waited to see if his captor would acquiesce to his demands. It didn't occur to him to wonder why he'd let him hit him again.

Two eyes, deep set in a mold of deceptive youth turned to meet his and Yukihina's rage faltered in the face of pure hatred. But the flicker was gone just as soon as it had appeared and there was an odd sense of vertigo as his torso slid from his legs. Heike had taken his surprise as an opportunity to cut him off just above the knees. It wouldn't take long to heal, but it would give him enough time to make an escape. And so he had. By the time that Yukihina was back on his feet and had let his arm jump back onto its stump, Heike was already long gone.

Rather than return to the side of the man to whom he'd currently pledged his allegiance, he sat for another hour, tugging at the strings of his tattered hoodie with vicious conviction, hoping to find some speck of blood that hadn't returned to his body. Just one speck would reaffirm his humanity. But he found nothing, and eventually had to retreat from his own monstrousness. While it consumed him, dwelling on it would make it even more difficult for his frozen time to thaw.

And somehow, though he would not acknowledge it, he knew that if his brain was frozen then his body would remain that way as well.


	50. Cardboard

"Hey, you."

Rain tapped against a makeshift shelter of cardboard in a messy beat that was almost deafening to the right sort of ears. The policeman knelt to get a better look at whoever was crouched under the blanket of flattened boxes. He was tiny and the way he'd hunched in on himself made him seem even smaller. To be honest, the policeman wasn't even sure that he was a boy at all- he was basing his assumption off his clothing, but the length of his hair was a bit long and in the dark his face was not particularly indicative. The boy didn't say anything at all. Perhaps he hadn't heard.

"Hey, kid. Are you alright? Are you lost?"

That got his attention. The child pushed the cardboard from his head and let the rain hit him. He was already sopping wet. Maybe he was ten, maybe he was twelve. It was hard to tell. "Nah. Just forgot how to get back."

"What's your name?" The cop inquired. "Where are your parents? Did you get separated from them?" Even if the answer was 'yes' it wouldn't be very helpful. It had been dark for a while now and he doubted that they would have taken their child out at this hour. They were probably long gone, sitting at home, waiting for the police to call and tell them that their son was safe.

The kid looked up and shook his head in a futile attempt to dislodge the water from his hair. "I'm Yuuki. Don't have parents."

"Did they make you angry? Is that why you're saying that?" The police man asked, offering his coat to Yuuki. It wasn't exactly dry but it was almost certainly warmer and dryer than anything he was wearing at the moment. "Did you run away?" That sort of behavior seemed a bit immature for a child of his perceived age, but it wasn't unheard of. Convincing children to go back home to their parents could be hard. If this kid wasn't already reported to the station as missing, his night was about to become a whole lot more difficult.

Yuuki stared at him for a long moment- a little longer than is generally appropriate in polite conversation. The cop began to wonder if he should start asking routine questions for diagnosing a concussion when the kid finally spoke. "Don't have any parents. Did run away though."

Things were getting more confusing. Was the boy an orphan then? That would explain a. But it would not explain where he had run from. "Who's taking care of you, then? Some relatives? Or do you have a new family now?"

"I don't have a family." Yuuki replied. "But I guess you can take me back since they'll find me anyway." He stood, tried to shake the wetness off again, and shoved his arms through the jacket's sleeves.

"Alright. Where do you live?" He needed an address to work with. The kid couldn't be too far from home. He knew most of the streets around this place. His shift ended in another half hour and he wanted to be done as soon as possible. Hopefully it was somewhere close; Yuuki was starting to unsettle him. There was something about the time it took him to formulate a response that was rather more than disconcerting. He gave himself two firm reminders that he was nothing but a lost boy, out at three am, and soaking wet.

After a minute or so of awkward stop-and-go conversation and fifteen minutes of walking, he found himself back at the police station; Yuuki had insisted that he could not go directly home. It was too far. Once they got there his guardians would hear of it and they would come to retrieve him. While the chances of his guardians waiting at the station were low, the database would probably be able to find out where they lived at the very least. There was only a handful of other officers in the building; only natural at this hour. The others who were on duty were out patrolling. "Got a kid here. Do we have any reports for missing children matching his description? His name's Yuuki." he asked his closest coworker; his superior as it so happened.

The man turned to get a good look at the newest arrival and, almost immediately, his face went pale. "Uh… Yeah. Yeah, I'll call his parents right now. You're almost off duty aren't you? You can go."

The policeman raised an eyebrow. Something here wasn't quite right; while he'd always known his captain to be a calm and composed man, he seemed visibly shaken by the sight of the child. Something was off about Yuuki and his superior's reaction to his appearance. "Excuse me sir, is something wrong with the kid?"

"You're off duty. Go home."

So he wouldn't get any proper response. There was no point in pursuing the issue for now. Perhaps he'd get an explanation in the morning. Or perhaps not- by the time he awoke and reported for duty, he'd already forgotten.


	51. Cardboard Part 2

It had been nearly half a decade since Yuuki Tenpouin had tried to run away from Eden. Calling it an escape attempt was incorrect because Yuuki was a smart boy. He knew that someone of his age could not possibly travel alone without being noticed, and he'd known that there was no real chance that he'd be able to get away. It wasn't so much escape as rebellion- the first of many. Disappointment in his inevitable retrieval was irrelevant. When two people, expertly dressed, but awkwardly acting as his so-called mother and father appeared at the station to pick him up, he'd run right back to their arms. He didn't have to be an adult to understand that, if he indicated that he'd acted suspiciously in front of any of the people he'd encountered on his little jaunt, they'd be eliminated. Setting up people who'd only tried to help was not a very Nyanmaru-ish thing to do.

Memory was not something that Code:Breakers were supposed to value and so Yuuki had forgotten the incident within days. In time the cop that had found him hiding under a cardboard box on a rainy night ceased to exist in his world.

Five years and plenty of other strange incidents and encounters later, the cop had not forgotten. The odd little boy he'd met haunted him through the night and into the morning. There were no answers from his superiors or their superiors, though the way they paled when asked was more than enough. He'd been demoted. He'd continued to ask. He'd been demoted again. The further down the ranks he fell, the more he wondered why. Perhaps he was some sort of masochist, because he couldn't stop asking why everyone was so eager to avoid speaking about some ten year old kid named Yuuki. By the time that he was fired he wasn't so much concerned about any one child or any one incident. The further he looked, the less things seemed to add up; criminals who had gotten off scot-free were dying by the dozens and, while the cause of death was almost always known (a piece or rebar through the head, strangled by an unidentifiable rope, cut in half by… something) the culprit was never found and the investigation stalled or stopped. Sometimes there were eye-witness accounts, but most often people who had been in the area at the time just disappeared. There were no trials. Evidence seemed to walk off the shelves. His former employers were hiding something, and he wasn't sure what it was.

The truth was elusive, but he was persistent. Names began to appear. Rumors of people named "Code:Breakers" reached his ears and references to a rather specific Biblical location were rather common. He found a small source of income working at a convenience store and continued to amass information through his remaining connections in the department. Eventually old friendships were no longer an excuse to maintain his information leaks, and he had to turn to less-savory sources. While he still despised criminals, his curiosity was insatiable, and they had information that the cops weren't willing to share.

Faced with piles of newspaper clippings, pilfered case files, and stacks of notebooks as high as her hips, his wife left him and took the children with her. He considered this another sacrifice that he had made to find the truth, and it only strengthened his resolve. There were times when he wished that he could meet Yuuki again, just once, to ask him a thing or two about this 'Eden' that he'd head so much about. In the beginning he'd thought that the two mysteries, while both conspiracies perpetuated by the government, were separate, but it was becoming clear that there was a deep and essential connection between them.

And he was coming close- the truth of the phantom Code:Breakers and Eden was forming in the bowels of his notes. A dangerous pattern was emerging, and though it seemed too strange to be true, there was no other explanation that fit the evidence.

It was October second- five years, one month, and twelve days since he'd first met a little redhead in the rain. Dinner was cup ramen and a bottle of alcohol. The evening's entertainment was a review of the audio he'd captured at his latest interview. It was interrupted by a knock at his door.

Sufficiently paranoid and easily spooked, he jolted in his chair and peered down the hall. He'd wanted a security camera, but could not afford one. He had no choice but to investigate. There was a peephole set into the door. It would have to do. It only took one glance- one short look. Though the image was distorted and five years had passed, though he'd only known him for a short hour or so, there was no mistake that his visitor was the boy in the rain from five years previous. There was someone else with him; a generic looking guy, perhaps a little older than Yuuki, with short black hair and a face that would be easy to miss in a crowd. His presence hardly registered with the ex-cop. He was too busy yanking open the locks to let the kid in. There were so many things he wanted to say! So many more that he wanted to ask! Adrenaline and excitement washed away any sort of caution he might have been harboring.

The door was open. After so many years his eyes met Yuuki's once again, and the difference in them was not lost upon him. A question of concern pushed up and out of his mouth in a jerk, drowning out whatever strange mantra the black-haired boy was reciting. He received no answer though- not to that question, nor any other. There was a hand on his wrist and all he knew was a hot, blue pain.

The destruction of his home in a fire made page six of the paper the next day. It would have been a good clipping for someone else's scrapbook of inconvenient questions.


	52. Apophasis

"Now it's not like I'm gonna tell you how to be a Code:Breaker, because I know you've been one longer, but seriously, you're doing this all wrong." Toki whined in that oddly droning voice of his. He'd only just joined the crew but he presumed to know everything about it because his job was a legacy left over from his sister and he knew his sister.

Nenene was the best of the Code:Breakers as far as he was concerned. Numbers? Ranking? Who cared about that kind of thing? They didn't mean shit. And, because he'd learned to be a Code:Breaker by watching her, that meant that he knew a lot more about it too, didn't it? The best were taught by the best and became the best. Unfortunately, this assumption was based on a number of other assumptions that were just as shaky if not more-so. "You've gotta have ambition! You can't just laze around all day! If you're gonna half-ass it then you should just get the hell out right now."

Yuuki watched him pace with glazed eyes of complete indifference. He was unoffended by Toki's blatant apophasis, much as he was unoffended by anything that wasn't trying to wake him up. While in later years Toki would despise Ogami for his lack of spirit, at this moment he hated Yuuki for faking it. He didn't presume to know someone as odd as Yuuki, but it was obvious enough to his untrained eye that behind all of those weird Nyanmaru gifts and bizarre mannerisms there wasn't anything left.


	53. Yaw

It wasn't time yet. The pieces were not in place and events had yet to progress to his satisfaction. Despite this the inquiries and demands for answers were grating on his nerves. Heike was not one to show his hand before he was prepared, but he wasn't the sort to endure days and nights of pestering either. He had invited anyone who wished to hear an explanation to come listen to a story.

The first few words barely escaped his mouth before he was interrupted.

"That's bullshit."

Why he'd chosen to let Yukihina attend this great event was something that was beyond him. Yuuki had insisted, but he could have always said no. It would have been so easy to provide another ultimatum. The first one that he'd tried had been based off of a basic pattern: If Yukihina came then they would end up fighting, and no one would hear the story of the founders. But Yuuki had his ways, and had managed to convince Yukihina to give his word that there would be no violence that night. Though he was a no-good criminal, Yukihina's word was as good as his bond. With such short notice he was unable to come up with another reason to exclude his would-be killer and was forced to let him come. Everything was in place and it should have been fine, but apparently he'd miscalculated. "What about it is bullshit, Yukihina?" he inquired, smile yawing into a dangerous cant.

If Yukihina sensed his bloodlust he ignored it. "It's bullshit because you don't even care about the truth. It's not even worth being called a 'lie.'"

Heike wasn't prone to moments of panic, but he did feel a sense of unease. "You're confident for a man who can't even be sure of his own name, Yukihina. I commend you." The jovial and cutting response certainly left Yukihina at a comforting loss for words, but his gaze did not falter nor did it doubt. He supposed that he could wrap Yukihina up in some ropes and toss him out of the room, but at this point it seemed his audience no longer trusted what he had to say.

Heike's mood was spoiled. He tucked his book under his arm and stood. "I'll tell my story another time when you're willing to listen quietly." Yes, he would tell them the story eventually. But it would have to be when a certain glorified zombie wasn't around.


	54. Snow

It's the middle of June right now, and the heat outside is almost unbearable. Ogami finds himself wishing that he could return to his old lost form of freezing cold, even if only briefly. Shibuya mansion's idea of air conditioning is a few strategically placed fans, and though he hates to think that he might be spoiled after a childhood spent in harsh environments, he's starting to resent it. Concentrating on his latest modeling endeavor is becoming increasingly difficult.

The last piece of the miniature castle that he's building is almost in place when Toki screams from the yard.

"YUUKI, WHAT THE FUCK?"

Ogami nearly snaps the delicate piece in half in his surprise. Apparently the two are playing just outside his window… Or perhaps Yuuki is playing, and Toki just happens to be around at the wrong time.

Yuuki mumbles some sort of reply to Toki's inquiry, and an indistinct and ominous conversation begins. It seems that the two have come to an understanding. Against his better judgment, Ogami decides to leave his eavesdropping at that. Whatever they're up to is not his business. His model is almost done, and once it is he intends to move to the basement to see if it's any cooler down there.

The model never does get completed.

Just as he's applied a fresh coat of glue to the last bit, his door swings open and something very cold and very wet hits him in the back of the head. Bit by bit he turns, attempting to reign in his temper, to find Yuuki's face just inches from his own. Toki is standing another five feet back, looking smug. Both are in possession of a number of snow balls. "Yuuki," he begins, finding it in himself to keep his voice level. It's easier if he ignores Toki. "Where did you get those?"

Yuuki starts to stack his snowballs on top of his head, leaving his hands free to gesticulate. "Yukinko make them for me 'cause it's really hot out. Do you want to play too?"

Helpless as ever in the face of Yuuki's impassive innocence, he cannot refuse the offer. It is scorching out today, and someone needs to wipe that grin off of Toki's face.


	55. Unease

To say that the situation was awkward would be to undersell it. Rui had done a good job of hiding the fact that she had joined Eden on the One Being Sought's orders. Perhaps a bit too good.

All of the other Code:Breakers were off at some lab or other, fighting Yukihina, Lily, and Sendou, and only she was left to save the most important man in the country. Unfortunately she had been ordered to save him from her former boss.

The shards from the broken ceiling clattered in a circle around the barrier of shadow that she'd made to protect herself and Prime Minister Fujiwara. As long as the noise continued she could avoid looking the One Being Sought in the face. But gravity was swift, and she dropped the barrier lest she lose her power. Their eyes met for an instant, and there was a moment of silent communication.

'I'm glad to see that you're still protecting my brother as I asked you to.' His eyes said. 'How ironic, that they would send you to turn me away.'

'I'm sorry, but I'm a Code:Breaker now. I have to fight you, and get you away from here if I want to stay in Eden to protect Rei.' A scythe of shadow wove itself into the palms of her waiting hands, and she shifted her balance. The optical chain of communication broke. The crushing sense of unease and embarrassment returned. She squared her shoulders, set a frown, and spoke. "Mr. Fujiwara, please get back. It's not safe here." Fujiwara smiled and brushed some dust from his sleeve. He did not seem to have any intention of running, but he did not need to.

The One Being Sought took to his feet, and let his sword hang at his side. "No need. I've already gotten the information that I came for." He did not wave, nor did he meet her eyes again on his way out, but she sensed that he was saying goodbye. She did not go after him. Her place was with Eden now, whether she liked it or not.


	56. Her Clock

Hitomi hangs his clocks from nails embedded in the fading plaster wall of an abandoned building. They are not much as far as grave markers are concerned; they are neither in a place where they are readily visible, nor do they have the names of those that they memorialize. He had wanted to carve them into each clock, but he found that he did not know the names of many of those who had passed. 06. 04. 05. Satou. Yamamoto. Nakamura. They were names to be sure, but not the names that they had been born with. They were thinly-veiled aliases, picked for their normalcy. They rarely reflected anything about the truth of the dead. Hitomi thought that it would be an insult to use names that were little more than tools for missions to preserve the memory of a departed soul.

He never got the chance to meet many of them. Most of the clocks on the walls are chosen arbitrarily. Whichever was closest, whichever he liked best, whichever he had yet to buy because he would not stand for repetition.

In the odd event that he did know the person for whom he was stopping a clock, he would attempt to find one that matched what he knew of their disposition. Here was a simple digital clock; the most Spartan design that he could find. It was for the previous Code:06. Funny how Rei had fallen in his footsteps with such a similar attitude. Next to it was an analogue clock in a wood frame with a painting serving as a backdrop for the former Code:05. The weakest ones tended to die the most often. He could not count the fives and sixes that hung from the Wall. Round clocks, rectangular ones, and the odd triangle filled it. Digital numbers, hands, and countless combinations of the above, dotted plaster for yards in either direction.

Everything was in some sort of order. When he ran he had found records from as far back as Eden's birth, before there were numbers, and when the Founders still controlled the place. The first clock was on the far left side of the wall. He'd been forced to remove its hands. There was no listed time or date for the first Code:Breaker, but the rest had distinct notes dedicated to the time and means of their passing. "02 failed to assassinate the target. Time of death, 01:26, August 12th." "Target eliminated. 05 killed in the line of duty. Time of death, 22:42, March 7th."

Closer to the end of the continuity than the beginning, there was a piece that he had taken nearly a week to purchase. The first two days had been spent deciding whether a grave marker was necessary. The next five were dedicated to picking out the perfect time piece. Hitomi had known her well. He'd fought at her side in countless battles, and while he was not sure how much he could trust her, he'd valued her as a comrade all the same. He'd picked a hexagonal clock; sharp around the edges with a yellow border. The hands were grey and ended in points as well. He'd waffled between this one and another round pink alarm clock with a cartoon frog hovering faint behind the numbers, but decided that the second was hardly appropriate considering the nature of her death.

Nenene's clock was the only one that he bought on that trip. He returned to the Wall, set the time just as he had with all of the others, and hung it from a waiting nail. That done, he gave the rest of the day to the blessed dark of sleep.


	57. Apopemptic

Random what-if thing about what might have happened (but almost certainly didn't) during certain canon events. Most likely will fly in the face of canon, or already has. Depending on where you look up this word, this may be an okay use of it, or an incorrect one… Oops. That's what happens when you depend on dictionaries without ever having heard it used.

Nenene had known Masaomi for years, and during that time she had never known him to give any apopemptic exclamations before disappearing. He would come and go without warning, oftentimes when they were in the middle of a conversation. It would happen at the very worst of times. For example: now. She had asked him to guard her little brother.

She had asked him to guard her little brother, and he was no longer there.

Where he'd gone didn't matter.

Why he'd gone there would matter, but not until later.

"MASAOMI."

Shadows swirled and sprung from the ground, and it was all that she could do to fend them off. Her opponent had been badly injured, and recently. Despite that, and despite his age, he was putting up one hell of a fight. There had been others before him, and they had been strong as well. Her Lost form was imminent. She couldn't spare a single drop of power to protect or attack anyone else. If she did, she would leave herself wide open. The same could not be said for Saechika.

"MASAOMI, YOU BASTARD. WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?"

If he replied, he was too far to be heard over the sounds of battle.

She'd made the mistake of straining to listen.

It was hardly a moment, but that moment was all that her opponent needed.

There was hardly a second to think. If she had been Masaomi, or if Masaomi had been there, then perhaps she would have had time. She threw herself in front of her little brother, her angel, and threw her arms wide, trying to form as big a wall as her small frame could manage.

The pain was immense and immediate. She thought that she might have managed to say a few words to her little brother, but she couldn't be sure.

And just as Masaomi left her, she left him.


	58. Mom

"Toki! Come downstairs! We're all waiting for you!"

Voices had been floating up from below for some time now. He wasn't sure just how long it had been since Rui had finished dinner, nor how much time had passed since the first time that she had asked to call him down. As far as excuses went, his was weak. There were a hundred things that he was doing on his computer, but none of them were particularly important. He could have finished them at any time, and all of them could wait until dinner was over. But he was not particularly hungry. Just as there was no justifiable reason to stay in his room, there was no reason to go downstairs; or so he thought.

The door thrummed with the force of Rui's knocks. She would not be taking silence for an answer. "Toki, get your ass down there right now! Dinner's getting cold!"

Experience was a harsh instructor. Defying a direct order was not an option. Toki closed his laptop, and slouched his way to the door. "Yeah, yeah, Mom. I'm co-" Two words too late, and one door opened, sickening realization sunk in.

Rui stared down at him.

Embarrassment didn't allow him to stare back.

That would be his downfall; his failure to meet her eyes told her all that she needed to know about whether his mistake had been sarcasm or something else. Her face flushed bright and illuminated a look of growing horror on Toki's face. He barely managed an expletive before she reduced the doorway to dust.


	59. Epicenter

It felt like there was a strong wind. A strong wind that wasn't so much pushing, as it was pulling. A wind that came from nowhere.

The center of the battle ground to a halt, and passivity spread out in ever radiating circles, stalling conflict wherever it found it. All eyes turned inwards towards the source of the unrelenting wind where a swirling mass had begun to grow and writhe.

Masaomi Heike sucked in a scarce breath. He grinned, but there was no mirth in it. No more than six paces to his left, Nenene let out a convicted curse.

How they had expected to have this battle without the negation occurring was a mystery, but the Emperor had been desperate, and he'd never considered that his solution might create its own problem. It was far too late for forethought or regrets. Sakurako planted a hand on her husband's waist and shoved him behind her. Shibuya screamed for their daughter, not seeing, but knowing that she was there.

The Emperor gazed at the epicenter in dumb horror.

Somewhere on the outskirts Zed choked on an agonizing laugh.

The wind grew stronger.

The ground began to crumble.

And in that moment the battlefield was united under the crushing certainty of imminent death.


	60. December

It became an inadvertent tradition by way of scarcity. Code:01, 02, and 04 were not often on missions together, but when they were they always found themselves at the same café when their work was done. Sometimes Nenene was bleeding on the plastic seats. Sometimes Heike was in a suit of armor. Sometimes Hitomi fell asleep in his cup of coffee.

Nenene hadn't thought of it as a post-mission ritual until she noticed the way that the waitress flinched when she saw them, or the way that the other regulars asked for their check. Apparently they had a bit of a reputation despite their sporadic visits. She didn't let it bother her; having a little more room, or a little more quiet was always nice.

Today she had ordered coffee. The waitress slid it across the table, and some sloshed over the rim of the cup, unable to keep up with its container's pace. Nenene slung a stinging rebuke after her. Hitomi huffed a harried chuckle. Heike was glued to his book.

"You don't have to be so mean to her. She's only doing her job." Hitomi reasoned, nudging a stack of napkins in her direction.

"She spilled my goddamn coffee!"

"That's because you yell at her every time, no matter what she does. Can you blame her for wanting to get away?"

"It's not my fault that she has no backbone."

Hitomi rapped a rhythm on his temple. "And what are we going to do next time? If you and," he looked over at Heike and decided that he shouldn't conclude the thought, "If you keep treating them like that then they might not let us come back."

"Who the hell says that we're coming back? I hate this place, and the service is shit."

Hitomi raised his eyebrows, and Heike buried a smile in his book. This was also part of the tradition. Nenene would decry the quality of the coffee and the service, and swear that they would never return to the café with the harshest words she could muster. They would always return in the end, always sit at the same table because she would insist, and always order the same things.

And, as dictated by tradition, all of them did return to the café at one point or another. Nenene would buy ice cream there with her father. Hitomi would stare in its windows whenever he passed by. Heike would read there on hot Sunday afternoons. But for now it was early December, and the wind blew cold and callous. The coming days would ensure that they never visited together again.


	61. Nicknames

"The Piercing Wave,"

"The Voice of Darkness,"

And, of course, "Code:03."

These were the nicknames that Yuuki had collected during his time as a Code:Breaker. He wasn't sure that he liked them very much. "The Voice of Darkness" in particular was far from heroic. It wasn't as if he had asked for them. They just piled up as he went along his bumbling way, forming mounds on the sides of the road with words and sounds and numbers all their own.

"The Piercing Wave" wasn't so bad, but it made him sound dangerous, and though he was, he didn't like to think of it that way. He wasn't dangerous; no more than Nyanmaru was dangerous. Rather than that, rather than piercing or slashing or destructive, he wanted to be strong. Strength was not only used to hurt others; it was used to protect. Dangerous was his past, and his childhood. Strength was his present and future. Or so he hoped.

The third and most common name that other people had imposed upon him was "Code:03," and he carried this one with reluctant pride. While he had been born for Eden, and raised for them, he did not like being associated with them. The number was the reason that he liked it. Number three meant that he was strong, and that he had spent enough time protecting others to be promoted. It meant that despite all of the short-comings that Shigure and Toki were always all-too-happy to point out he had, he was worth something. He was not an X-mark, a failure, or another empty gravesite. So that nickname was all right, but it wasn't perfect. Yuuki was no fool. He knew that nicknames and numbers were used to create distance. It was a name that was given to him so that when he died he would not be a name, but a number.

Before he signed his life away to Eden on paper (it had always been theirs; becoming a Code:Breaker was a mere formality), there was the horde: the many nicknames that he'd been given over the course of his childhood. "Monster," "Motherless Mitochondria," and so on. A swarm of buzzing words that hummed through the air and permeated his early years. He couldn't bring himself to hate those ones.

There was only one nickname that was pure and untainted with ulterior motives, or negative connotations. "Yuu." Makoto had called him that. No one before, no once since. He liked that nickname, and so he liked to give nicknames as well. Nicknames without connotations or ulterior motives. Nicknames that had meaning because of who was giving them, not what they meant. Nicknames that might, consequentially, create some distance. That was a consequence he was willing to shoulder because friends were not a thing that he needed, and nicknames were not for the person giving them. They were for the person who received them, for better or for worse. His nicknames gave him a reputation, took away his humanity, and taught him how others saw him. The last one had given him hope. And Yuuki was fond of giving things, and so he gave everything that he could, including names filled with hope.


	62. Stench

Kouji thinks that he smells blood, but it's difficult to say because all of the dust in the air is clouding his senses, and there's an odd ringing in his ears from the crashes and bangs that had helped to lead him to this place. He's come out here to look for Yuuki. None of the ex-Code:Breakers had been particularly concerned about his whereabouts. "It's always like this," they'd said, and turned their attention back to Sakura Sakurakouji's hospital bed. He wouldn't have bothered if Yukihina of all people hadn't wondered aloud where he could have gotten off to.

Intrigued by his companion's unprecedented interest, Kouji had excused himself to go for a walk. Now he padded along, taking advantage of his Lost form's exceptional nose, trying to figure out where the cat had gotten off to. The smell of warm milk and a series of suspicious thumps had gotten him as far as the alleyway, and then the smell of blood and pulverized concrete had interfered, wreaking havoc on his senses. While his ears are not nearly as good as Yuuki's, the absence of any living sound sets him ill at ease. The trail ends here.

The walls of the alley are a mess; some of them have ceased to exist, and others cling to a tenuous kind of structure. Snatches of rubble are covered in lines. If Kouji tilts his head the right way, he thinks that they might look a little like Nyanmaru.

In the middle of it all is Yuuki. He is on his knees with his face pressed into the concrete and his arms flung out on either side. If the world wasn't almost obscured by the stench of injury and ruin, Kouji would have thought him sleeping. He nudges his snout under Yuuki's arm, lifts it, and takes a step back. It falls. He presses his nose against his cheek. There is no response. The stench of iron is overwhelming in this form, but he will have to endure it. If he dawdles much longer he doubts that Yuuki will have any more blood left to bleed.

With mere minutes of struggle, he manages to heft Yuuki onto his back, and disappears into the deep dark depths of the hidden ways of the city, following what's left of his sense of smell back to the hospital.


	63. Grandchildren

It had been a long time since the other founders abandoned Eden and left it in his care. It was a troublesome child, due in no small part to its beginnings. Sakurako had never had much in the way of maternal instincts, Zed was absent more often than not, and The Emperor was long gone. It was no surprise that Eden had grown up rotten; none of its parents knew how to raise a child, all of them were horrible influences, and most of them had left it behind. But someone had to serve as its guardian, and Heike wasn't so sure that he trusted its foster parents. And so he remained, scraping whatever space his erstwhile child was willing to make for him in its life.

Today he was visiting one of the labs on business. Fujiwara had called him there to speak of this, that, or the other. All very official. All very secret. He had never been to this particular part of Eden's domain, and could not stop his eyes from wandering from side to side. Everything seemed ever so slightly off, as it did in most of Eden's buildings. The lights were just a bit too dim, the ceilings a little too low, the echoes just moments away from proper timing.

In the corners toys had piled up like windfall.

Fujiwara spoke to him in an office that overlooked a playground filled to bursting with a swarm of children. It was difficult to listen as they ran and shrieked shouts of laughter just behind a sheet of glass.

"You seem distracted today. Is something the wrong?"

Heike turned back to Fujiwara, and it occurred to him for the first time that he had not taken in a word that he had said over the past five minutes or so. Unapologetic, he asked the question that had been bothering him for some time now. "Who are these children?

Fujiwara shoved an elbow across his desk and smiled with chilling affection out the glass to a particular trio that was gathered together by the gardens. "No one told you?"

A surge of rage so sudden and strong that it momentarily dislodged his controlled expression hit Heike, and he had to bite back a snarl because he knew that it would only amuse Fujiwara. For Eden to be hiding things from him, a founder of all people! What audacity. Only a fierce love for his child, _his_ child not theirs, kept him from acting upon an overwhelming impulse for violence.

"In that case, let me explain; these are children created by Eden. They will be valuable resources in the future." Fujiwara's smile did not falter as he elaborated upon the lives that had been and would be lost, all in search of a pawn to turn the tides of war.

An apathetic eulogy for X-marks and defects droned on in the background, but Heike had already drifted off into thought again. He looked upon the grandchildren he'd never known he'd had, and wondered how many would die before him.


	64. Inter

They sleep inside the graves so far below the ground that the weather and passage of time will never uncover them. The dirt piles up in inches and miles, different shades of dust and debris support plants, and the plants support feet, which pat down the ground ever more, solidifying the caps that hold them down.

Only a handful of people know about these graves at all these days, and that is because they were the ones that dug them a century past. These graves belong to mothers, sisters, brothers, and fathers. They are friends and enemies, comrades and classmates, and simple corpses that no one had ever bothered to know. Not everyone can live forever. Yukihina visits these graves on occasion, not because he plans to, but because his wandering feet bring him there in the rare junctures when he is not traveling the world at the behest of the one man that he has elected to place his trust in.

Sometimes there are traces that the others have been there, but these little hints, the footprints, the crushed plants, the remains of flowers and incense, have grown increasingly intermittent over the years to the point that decades pass between them.

Footprints take him there on walk after walk whenever he finds himself back in Japan, and he can't for the life of him say why. Perhaps it is because he feels that, by all rights, he too should be interred beneath those hardened layers of dirt. Perhaps it is that he is haunted by the dusty ghosts of a past that he cannot fully remember. Perhaps it's because, just a little past the others, a grave with a marker denotes the one grave that everyone always remembers. It is the only plot that ever shows signs of visitation, of people going there and coming back. It bears a simple legend that betrays nothing. "Here lies the grave." No name adorns it, but it needs none for those that know it, and its occupant is happy to supply one for those who don't.

Yukihina has met the man in the grave. He knows that his name is Zed, and he knows that he is the man that took his life away and gave it to Heike, though he has no memory of the incident himself. He bears no grudge against Zed because it would be foolish to hate a man who spends most of his time buried among dusty deaths that are a lifetime past. He bears no grudge for anyone but Heike, who had convinced Zed to make him into a monster in the first place. On one occasion he even leaves flowers on Zed's grave, more out of a twisted sense of humor than respect or comradery. The next time that the Founder finds him, he presents him with a single rose in return with an impish grin on his face, and Yukihina encases it in ice. Zed laughs, slaps his knee, and goes off to give it to a pretty girl who might appreciate it more.

And then Zed is back in the ground before he knows it.

Yukihina will occasionally run over these memories while standing before the stone, but more often he looks at the fields of grass that dodge between the trees under which a family and a number of friends that he must have had but cannot remember rest.

Without memories, he never finds the motivation to remain there for long. The very same feet that carry him to the feet of the graves carry him away and on to the next location where he suspects his old home once stood. And until it's time to return, instinct ferries him along phantom paths that have been long overrun with grass and trees, and eventually leads him back onto roads that have been paved for longer than he's been alive, and he finds his way back to the shack or the bar or the hovel or the hotel where the rest of the living Re:Codes are staying. There he takes his place against the wall to wait.

Sometimes they ask where he's been, more out of courtesy than any real interest, and he never replies. They accept this because they know him, and they know better than to expect an answer. Sometimes Kouji will press or Seeker will raise an eyebrow, but these subtle interrogations never amount to much. Yukihina's jaunts with the unknown ghosts are his and his alone. They are a privilege afforded to those trapped outside of time.


	65. Expansive

On the nights when the heat of the day was brushed away with a cool breeze, Sakurako Sakurakouji would slip from the expansive confines of her parent's estate and off into the woods beyond. Out there the ground was cool beneath her bare feet, the trees were welcoming, and the stars above lit her way.

Most nights nature embraced Sakurako and pulled her away from the life of kimono and manners and tea ceremonies that her parents had forced upon her from a very early age. While she had no problem with the beautiful clothes that her parents gave her other than that they restricted her movement, and while she liked to keep her hair long and wear the makeup they supplied, she held no affection for the social mores imposed upon her by her gender and her status. Neither of those things meant anything out among the walls of the world.

At first she would just run. Little twigs snapped under her heels, and rocks dug into her toes, but she continued to sprint, hiking up her robes to her knees. Branches stuck out in her path and some would catch on her sleeves and hair, while others scraped her cheeks. She didn't mind them because the air tasted fresh, clear of perfumes and polish, the ground was soft and forgiving for all of the things that coated it, and there was no one there to tell her that a lady did not run. When the sight of her house was completely obscured by leaves and trunks, and a ribbon of water curled out in front of her, she would stop to take a drink from the stream and listen to the calls of birds and bugs looking for others of their kind. Then she would wander. The woods were a wonderful place. There were trees to climb (and she did), animals to chase (which she also did), and plenty of places to hide if she were so inclined (which she wasn't). But all good things had to come to an end, and old nights had to die to make a place for new days.

Once the moon had moved a ways across the sky and the stars began to lose their shine, she would weave back through the woods and slip back under her covers with her parents none the wiser.


	66. Ice Cream

It's becoming increasingly clear that neither Seeker nor Yukihina have any idea of how to go about raising a child, and Kouji has had just about enough of watching them try.

Seeker is generally detached. He offers suggestions for Rui's care, but they are rarely sane or practical. Yukihina looks as if he wants to help, but cannot fathom how to start. Kouji had never expected watching Rui would be a group effort, but he finds that he is disappointed in them all the same.

Rui does not seem to mind, nor does she seem to realize that she is anything less than their equal. He calls her "comrade," and while he does believe that that is the case, someone needs to make sure that she makes it to adulthood with all of the necessary knowledge.

So for now he's her father, and he's taking her to get some ice cream. They attract any number of stares along the way to the shop. She is a young girl in overalls, and he is a man with a scar hugging his eye, and danger in his step. It's clear to anyone looking that they are not related. In the months that she's been with them no one has called the police about a suspected kidnapping just yet, but he is sure that it is only a matter of time. Rui marches on ahead of him, oblivious to his concerns. This is for the better. Her apparent ease calms the crowd, and most just shrug away their dark concerns after one glance at the grin on her face.

The store that he has in mind is no more than a counter in a wall. He orders two cones: one vanilla, for himself, and a strawberry one for Rui. In the coming years she will adjust her order to match his, but for now she's fond of things that remind her of hot summer days spent with her family. Kouji asks her if she thinks that they should get ice cream for the others as well. Rui considers this and asks what flavors Seeker and Yukihina might like. Kouji finds that he can't provide an answer, and the subject is dropped.

The sun beats down on their way back, and Kouji wonders how much longer this little piece of childhood will last until they have to move on to the next town, the next country, the next temporary reel, and how they'll fare with a little girl at their side.


	67. Hobby

"Kakoshima!"

Rei turned in his seat and smiled that canned grin that he'd only just perfected. It had been little more than a week since he'd transferred here; it was longer than he'd ever spent in any once place for as long as he could remember, and though he'd taken aliases in the past, it was the first time that people had had much occasion to use them. He struggled momentarily to remember his classmate's name before coming up with an answer. "Did you need something, Noguchi?"

Sosuke Noguchi, the boy who occupied the desk just to his left , gave him a grin and held up a Gameboy. "You play Mon Mon Hunter, right? I heard you mention it to that girl you were talking to earlier. Want to play?"

Rei didn't let his smile falter. "I'm sorry. I didn't bring it with me today." And he hadn't because it had never occurred to him that he would have anyone to play it with. Hitomi had bought it for him in the first place, claiming that it would be a fun hobby, and help him to have fun for once. Rei had tried to play it once, lost interest, and left it in a corner to gather dust.

"So bring it tomorrow!"

The suggestion was as sudden as it was unexpected. Rei found himself nodding before he could stop.

"Great! See you at lunch then, okay? Tomorrow."

"Okay. Tomorrow."

It was only one time; just one game. Somehow, and even he was not entirely sure how, Rei had won. "Wanna play again tomorrow?" Noguchi had asked with a defeated grin. "I won't lose to you again."

Rei had agreed, but being a Code:Breaker tended to make keeping appointments difficult. Noguchi arrived the next morning to find that Rei Kakoshima had transferred away, leaving no trace that he'd ever been there.


	68. Setsubun

It's Setsubun.

That is the only explanation Heike receives when he asks Yuuki, summoning all of his patience and self-restraint, why he, one of the four founders, is covered in beans. They sit in his hair, pool under the collar of his jacket, and line the bend of his book. One lonely legume floats in his tea.

"Yuuki, you are being a very bad boy." He rumbles in a voice that he saves for only the worst of offenses.

Without any apparent hesitation, Yuuki reaches back into his sack of soy beans for another handful. Heike's scolding only drives him on. Heike knows this, and so prepares to cut any additional edible projectiles as they fly, but the next attack does not come from his front. A single bean hits the back of his head, hangs suspended in his wavy hair for just a moment, and then slides down his neck to rest with the collection in his collar.

In front of him, Yuuki leans right until just before the tipping point, and his mouth falls into a slack, amused "o." "Hi Yukinko."

Heike tries to turn to retaliate against Yukihina with something much deadlier than a bean when another barrage assaults him from above. Just between his eyes the skin furrows into something ominous. Toki's laughter rings through the yard. "Oh man, did you see his _face_?" He thinks he hears Yukihina snort behind him.

That is the thing that tears it.

Everything goes white, and it takes them well into the next day to fill in the resulting crater.


	69. Agape

At first they'd started out as a means to an end, though Hitomi was loath to admit it. He had sworn on life and limb that he would do whatever he could in order to prevent another Code:Breaker from dying. It hadn't mattered who they were. They could have been young, old, fat, thin, weak, strong, kind, or cruel; as long as they had tossed away their name for the sake of a number, he would keep them safe. He cared for their lives, but not for them themselves. At least at the beginning.

Apathy had never been one of Hitomi's strong suits.

He noticed the way that Yuuki sat, more perching than reclining, and how he typed by pecking at the keyboard finger by finger at the speed of sound.

The various cross-shaped pendants that Toki did not believe in, but liked the look of, did not escape his sight.

There was the way that Ogami didn't react no matter how hot the sauce Toki slipped into his food, and how Rui started to smile a little wider when she'd had a bit too much to drink. Idle observation concluded that that Heike would lean in favor of one author for a week or so, and then to another the next.

All of these little things built up bricks into towers, and one morning Hitomi awoke from his sleep and saw that they were _people_. It wasn't gradual. It was the sudden crushing realization that all of his good will to that point had been orbiting around a conviction that was missing its heart. Empty promises to guard and preserve meant nothing in the face of the boundless agape that he'd found within himself. So he tossed away the old promises and built them anew on the basis of the people who'd emerged from the pieces he'd pictured. He would defend Rui who went fishing for lowlifes off the top of tall buildings. He would guard Yuuki who would scratch at his stomach when he was full, Toki the outrageous flirt, and Ogami who hid his models from everyone but made them all the same.

Every mission became something more. As opposed to assassinations, they became a chance to spend time with the only people on the planet with whom he felt a sort of kinship. In a way he had looked to save them from death, and they had saved him from a life of mindless fighting for vacant promises. He considered them family.

They certainly quarreled like one.

He hoped that one day he would be able to bring them all together and teach them that they did not have to be in permanent opposition, but it would take time for him to overcome the damage that Heike's scoring system had done, and while he'd thought that he had the luxury of patience, an epiphany proved him wrong.

Eden chased him from what little daylight he had managed to scrounge as a nonexistent, and he became less than nothing in the eyes of the world. So he bided his time in the dark, dark underground, and fell back into that place of symbols, pawns, and tick-tocks with only the memories of his late companions providing any sort of light. Imminent death, which he had suspected for quite some time, became a certainty that tempered the glow of affection he felt for the others until he could no longer remember what it was that made Rui embarrassed, or which bad habit Toki had been trying to kick.

So when he formed his plan to carve a place in the world for Code:Breakers past and present, there was an unspoken clause stating that this plan was, at least in part, a plot to see his patchwork family once again.

He did get to see Ogami, wearing the same glove as ever over his left hand. He did get to see Toki, all smiles and bravado. He even got to see Heike with that unsettling smile that had always set him on edge over the years. But even as the lights dimmed, and the last vestiges of life left his body in the form of electric sparks, Yuuki and Rui remained as insubstantial as afterimages; little more than moth-eaten memories.

"Hitomi," Rei told him, "You're not alone."

And he acknowledged that this was true, but cannot prevent himself from wishing for just a little extra company before his journey to the other side. But it, like many other things, couldn't be helped, and he died in Rei's arms.


	70. Propel

Toki thought that Yuuki was insufferable before. He now realizes that he was wrong. In the past Yuuki had been annoying. _Now_ he is intolerable.

It starts innocently enough as Yuuki's shenanigans often do. He produces a laptop from his room and opens a browser. Toki assumes, based on past experience, that he is checking the stock market or contacting one of his numerous employees. Half an hour later something floats past the periphery of Toki's vision. That something has red hair and is clad in white.

Toki jerks a full one hundred and eighty degrees, knocking over his drink in the process. "Yuuki?"

"Look Fourth, I can fly too."

Yuuki's toes dangle a good four inches above the ground, and his coat floats around him as if he's suspended in water. He rolls and some invisible force far out of the range of human hearing propels him through the air. In the midst of his lazy rotations one of his feet flies wild and knocks a photograph to the ground.

"Yuuki, what the hell? Get down from there!"

"Don't wanna."

Toki takes a swipe at his arm but misses and Yuuki bobs up another three feet. His hair and hood brush the ceiling.

"Goddammit- How are you even doing that?"

"Saw it on the internet." Yuuki replies. This is the extent of his explanation. "I'm gonna go show Yukinko." He floats towards the door and knocks another precious framed piece of history from its nail.

Somewhere down the hall Toki hears Rui demand an explanation. For fear of a concussion he sticks his head out the doorframe. "Nothing! Everything's fine!" But everything is not fine. Yuuki has escaped out into the mysterious maze of the mansion, and Toki only manages to catch sight of his foot disappearing around a corner. There is movement in Rui's room above. It occurs to Toki that if he stays here much longer then she will arrive, and he will be the only one left in a room with two broken picture frames. The ramifications of this revelation cannot be ignored, and Toki uses the planet's magnetic field to propel himself out into the hall.

Ten minutes, four laps of the halls, and three feet above the floor, they lose their powers simultaneously.

Yuuki falls amidst a flurry of fabric and lands on his feet.

Toki is not so lucky.

* * *

><p>Author's note: So acoustic levitation is a thing and I hope that it gets included in the manga in some way, shape, or form. I apologize for any science fails that occurred here.<p> 


	71. Photograph

Hitomi was not particularly surprised to discover that Heike slept with his eyes open, though he was a bit pleased to learn how Heike slept at all. Heike was always on his guard, and he was honored that he felt safe enough to doze off while he was in the room.

Heike was sitting, fingers hooked loosly around the handle of a teacup and chin tucked into his collar. From the smile on his lips and the glint in his eyes any enemy would have assumed that he was still awake. But Hitomi had known him for years, and the way that his shoulders had sunken and his breath came and went at an even beat betrayed him. Heike's hair had cast to the side revealing a lack of eyebrows. This absence was something that Hitomi had noted several times over the course of their acquaintance. It had puzzled him, and he couldn't help but wonder what he might look like with them. So, when presented with the chance, he found himself unable to exercise restraint. There was a marker on one of the tables nearby. He removed the cap and began to draw.

Three tense and tenuous moments later he pulled out his cell phone and snapped a photograph. He thought that he might like to show it to Yuuki someday.

* * *

><p>It was a stupid risk, but Hitomi couldn't help himself. Nagging guilt gnawed at his heart until even the threat of Eden hanging over his head could not dissuade him from making some sort of contact. He was confident that Rei could handle his absence, if not for any desirable reasons. Rui was similarly sturdy; she'd found a place without him. Toki would bluff and bluster his way through it, and Heike would accept it as he had any number of disappointments. It was Yuuki that had caused his concern. When Hitomi had broken away from Eden Yuuki had been little more than a child, still torn from the death of one friend and loss of another. Hitomi feared that another disappearance had the potential to break him.<p>

So he'd sent a letter.

Given his situation he did his best to ensure anonymity while preserving the message. There was no accompanying note, no signature, and no return address. He had not licked the stamp, nor had he allowed his bare fingers to come in contact with the paper. There were no telltale traces of hair, and the envelope was of the most ubiquitous brand that he could find. It was addressed to the president of the Tenpouin group. Inside was a single photograph; one that Yuuki had seen once before. It was a blurry shot, poorly lit and inexpertly taken, of Heike with a pair of ink lines arched above his eyes.

The envelope passed through any number of hands before it reached Yuuki's desk.

He ripped it open, stared at the image inside, and allowed himself a small smile in lieu of tears.

* * *

><p>Two years later, Yukihina and Yuuki sat side by side on the roof of Shibuya mansion. Yukihina's hands were tucked into his pockets, and Yuuki's were thrown out on either side of him, strewn over shingles still warm from the setting sun. "Hey, Yukinko." Yuuki said, staring at the shifting sky.<p>

Yukihina waited. A star winked out from the approaching shade.

"Yukinko, are you sad 'cause the One Being Sought is dead?"

Another star pushed through the fading light. Yukihina realized that he hadn't bothered to draw a breath in over an hour. He did so. "No."

The real answer hung between them, and Yukhina wondered when Yuuki had wormed his way close enough to grasp it.

Five more stars emerged, and Yuuki started to rummage in his pockets. Yukihina did not notice, lost in a feeling that he dubbed "disappointment" because its real name was one he had yet to accept. And then Yuuki pried his fingers open, and pressed a well-worn photograph into his palm. "Here," Yuuki said and looked him directly in the eye, "I'll give you this."

Yukihina held the picture out to catch some fading light on its surface. A smile so large and rare that it threatened to crack his lips tore across his face. It had been so long since he'd thanked anyone for anything that he'd forgotten the words, so he settled for ruffling Yuuki's hair.

It was not quite full dark when Yuuki fell asleep. Yukihina tucked the photograph into a vest pocket, slung Yuuki under his arm, and carried him down to his room.

Kouji caught him emerging from Yuuki's door after tucking him in to bed. Yukihina realized, just a moment too late, that a little smile still lived on his lips and in his eyes.

Kouji raised an inquisitive brow, but Yukihina shook his head. He would show him later, but for now he wanted to keep it to himself for a little longer.


	72. Muddled

On May 5th, in a little hospital owned and operated by Eden, Yuuki Tenpouin crossed the line between experiment and human being for the first of many times. Using genetic engineering to create designer children was a recent development, and the first of the X-marks were named as such because they never had the chance to be born. In those first tenuous moments of life Yuuki did not breathe and the doctors held their breath as well. Then he drew in air, and the room gave a collective sigh of relief. That breath became his first cry, packed with the force of an unprecedented power that he was far too young to control. Three perished in the resulting collapse. It was a miracle that he emerged unscathed.

The first two years of Yuuki's life were spent in silence with unpredictable interruptions of noise. They tied a gag over his mouth and left him in a room made of building block walls and melamine sponges.

On his third birthday they removed the gag and let him try to speak. Things were easier to control in the chamber which seemed to absorb their every word, and after another year they told him that he could go outside.

It was difficult. The world outside his room was loud and hectic and almost unbearable at first, but he was quick to adapt, and within a week he had joined classes with the other children in the facility. In a classroom full of noise and activity it was all too easy for what limited concentration he'd acquired in his short four years to slip. Sometimes his voice leapt away from him, and things and people ended up breaking. Yuuki tried harder. By his fifth birthday the powers that be declared him in full control of his power, and the few possessions that he'd gathered over the years were moved to a room with a solid floor and smooth walls. But two years of mistakes were difficult to forget, and the other children didn't dare come near him. He'd moved closer but he'd never felt further away.

And then he'd met Makoto.

It was an abnormally cool day in June, but Yuuki felt awfully hot. A ring of bandages constricted around his head, and his left cheek had a bruise where Shigure had hit him. Two days had passed since he'd nearly lost his life saving a dog, and thirty-six hours had crawled by since Makoto had told him why Shigure was so upset.

Today it was just the two of them wandering out by the garden, and despite the breeze Yuuki was broiling. It was difficult to think, difficult to even walk straight, and almost impossible to concentrate on what his friend was saying. Makoto wandered ahead, a book tucked under one arm, and a monologue on his tongue, and Yuuki trailed behind. The world swirled and wavered, and Yuuki's mind wandered. Fuzz filled his eyes and thoughts and after what felt moments, but was more minutes, a hand yanked him back by his collar. "Yuu, are you okay? You were gonna walk into the street!" He turned and stared at Makoto, but it seemed impossible to focus. He was nothing but a blur. Despite his disorientation, Yuuki concluded that he'd worried his friends enough over the past few days and so he shook his head. The movement dislodged the last of his balance and his legs gave out from under him. "M' okay." He muttered, though his throat felt like sandpaper. Makoto's hair ripped backwards and several feet further a tree toppled. Yuuki watched with muddled shock for a moment before everything went dark.

He awoke in a room of crosshatched panels and wire floors that he hadn't seen in just over a year. A doctor sat cross-legged next to him. He opened his mouth to ask why he was back, but something was building up behind the ragged interior of his throat, and he had enough presence of mind to clasp his hands over his mouth before it could escape. The trapped sound wreaked momentary havoc in his mouth. His teeth vibrated, and everything seemed sharp and swollen. The feeling passed. The doctor glanced up from his book. "You collapsed. You're running a fever, but it's only a mild case of strep throat. You'll be better soon. "

Yuuki tried to speak again, but this time the doctor slapped a palm over his mouth before he could manage a syllable. The painful vibration of a shockwave withheld bounced around his jaw for a second and then faded.

"Don't speak. You can't control your sound right now. I want you to stay quiet until you're better. Do you understand?"

Yuuki nodded.

So Yuuki spent the next week locked in the room where he'd grown up, barely catching snatches of conversation that persisted outside the soundproofed walls, his fear of alienation serving as a better gag than any they'd used when he was a toddler. As the fever died and lucidity returned it occurred to him that Makoto had seen him lose control, and that if he'd faced just a few inches to the left he could have hurt him. Pounds of doubt piled up making the pain in his throat pale in comparison. He feared that Makoto would hate him or call him a monster.

But when the doctors finally opened the door Makoto darted in, a blur of curls and glasses, and all but tackled Yuuki to what served as the floor. Shigure remained in the doorway, sulking but relieved. Eventually Makoto convinced him to come inside and they spent hours filling the silence with words.

* * *

><p>Note: Based on an anon request in the reviews. As it so happens I'd wanted to write something similar to what they'd asked for but kept forgetting- I'm really glad you brought it up, anon! Thank you! I had a lot of fun writing this!<p> 


	73. Friend

Yuuki had, at one point, offered to drive by way of shoving his Eden-issued license in Ogami's face. Ogami had suggested that they hail a taxi. Yuuki countered with a third option, and now they sat in the back of one of the Tenpouin Group's cars. It felt strangely isolated; a window separated them from the driver.

Ogami could not recall how long it had been since he had last been alone with Yuuki. There had been times in the past when a small cat had shown up to check on one of his missions, and other occasions when he'd spotted him sleeping on a bench and had kept him company until his handlers had arrived, but those days were long past. Now life was a whirlwind of activity, and all of the Code:Breakers were in one place more often than not. Today was not an intentional exception. Sakura had been invited, and would have come if not for her father falling ill.

It had been almost ten minutes since they had left Shibuya mansion, and Yuuki had yet to make a sound. Ogami could not remember a time that he had seen him so silent. He always seemed to be humming a snatch of song or mumbling about something under his breath. The hush was heavy and unnatural. He waited.

"Y'know, Makoto was my first friend."

Ogami turned to look at Yuuki. He was smiling, but it was that same sad little smile that seemed the only expression of grief he could manage.

"When I was a kid there was always a lotta other kids around, but they were all scared of me. They ran away and called me names and they all hated me 'cause they thought I was gonna hurt them."

It was a rare and delicate occasion when any Code:Breaker decided to discuss their past, and so when Yuuki paused, Ogami dared not interrupt. Minutes passed before he spoke again.

"Except Makoto wasn't scared. He talked to me on his own and he didn't run away. He was really amazing 'cause he even got Shigure to talk to me and Shigure always hated me before." Scenery zipped by outside the window. They were in the city now. "Shigure'd always yell at me when I got hurt and try to help people, but Makoto understood. He'd never get mad, and he'd always talk to Shigure for me so I didn't get in trouble. He was probably really worried about me too, but he never said anything and I guess I never thought that someone'd be worried about me even when Makoto told me Shigure was. I think maybe if Makoto told me he was worried too then I would've been more careful, but I dunno." His smile grew the longer that he spoke, though it was clear that it wasn't because he was happy. "Makoto couldn't see too well. He had these big glasses with really thick lenses and they covered half his face, and he was always carrying around this big book 'cause he liked to read a lot. Sometimes Shigure and I'd listen to him read stuff, and he always told us lots of things. I guess we usually already knew all of that stuff, but we'd listen anyway 'cause it was Makoto so we didn't care. He'd get really excited and start talking really loud until it hurt my ears and Shigure'd have to ask him to be quieter. "

Yuuki looked prepared to continue talking, but the car rolled to a stop and the driver rapped at the window. "We're here, President. Would you like me to wait for you outside?"

The smile fell from Yuuki's face, and he tugged Ogami out of the car. "Yeah. We'll be back soon. C'mon, Sixth. Let's go see Makoto."

* * *

><p>Author's Note: Based on a suggestion by NJ7009 because you guys have discovered my secret, and that secret is that if you give me a Yuuki prompt I will almost always get incredibly excited and post a drabble based on it in less than 48 hours.<p> 


	74. Straight Key

_**A/N: This is full of spoilers up to chapter 208. Do not read any further than this sentence if you don't want to be spoiled.**_

_An AU where Nenene becomes a Fujiwara a bit later than in the manga._

* * *

><p>Over the course of her short life, Nenene had come to despise the word "elite." It hung over her head in every moment of every day. Her teachers, mentors, guardians, and benefactors dangled it just out of reach, close enough that she felt she could grasp it, but far enough away that she knew she never would.<p>

Nenene was a barcode.

No "X-mark," no "Apple," no qualifications what-so-ever: just a simple barcode.

That would have been well and good if it weren't for the handful of children that were the chosen ones.. Her teachers spoke of them as if they were the apex of humanity. They spoke of them as they would speak of test tube gods.

During the afternoons, just after lunch, all of the barcodes would be let into the yard to play and explore. The elite barcodes were no exception. Their presence only served to fuel Nenene's doubts; they didn't seem all that special to her, and this annoyed her. The majority of them did act with some dignity, and she could sense the weight of their power, but there was one or two that she could hardly stand. The worst offender was purportedly the elite among elites, the cream of the crop, the future of Eden. His name was Yuuki and she despised him. "The pinnacle of our research" they'd said, and yet he rolled through the mud and crashed into trees. "The strongest among you" they'd crowed, and he'd broken an arm saving a dog. "Among the most intelligent barcodes that we've ever produced" they boasted, and he spent most of his time staring into space for hours or reading books written for the average toddler.

Being subjected to such praise for an unapologetic airhead was infuriating. Was he all that she had to aspire to? There had to be something about him that made him special. The people of Eden did not give praise lightly, but she could not for the life of her see anything exceptional about him. She was determined to discover his secret.

An opportunity presented itself in the form of Makoto. She'd never thought much of him before; he was a kid just like the rest of them. Maybe he was a bit friendly for someone raised by Eden, and a little too fearless for his own good, but she'd never looked at him twice. Things changed when he started spending time with Yuuki. About a week after she'd concluded they were friends she caught him as they filtered out into the yard and threw him against a wall. "Hey. You." Makoto blinked at her from behind skewed lenses, surprised, but not frightened. "What's up with that weird red head you're always hanging out with? What's his deal? Is he some kind of idiot or something? Or is that some kind of act?"

"You mean Yuu?" Makoto asked with a baffled but happy smile plastered across his face. "Well, Yuu's actually really smart! Except he's kinda stupid too. He's smart in a stupid way."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means he's Yuu."

"And what the hell does _that_ mean?"

By the end of the conversation Nenene thought she might like Makoto. Or at least she didn't hate him.

They began to talk more often, and over the course of numerous interrogations she learned more about Yuuki than she would have ever thought possible. Makoto's observations were rarely useful. She knew that Yuuki liked Nyanmaru, and that his favorite place in the yard was the garden. Makoto told her stories of him falling from trees rescuing cats, and how he'd gotten stuck up one himself when he'd gone Lost earlier that week. The information was amusing, but not the sort she'd been looking for. Her only hope of gauging the great elite's worth was to confront him face to face.

It took a while to catch Yuuki alone. She remembered the days when he lived a solitary existence with exasperated regret. When he wasn't with Makoto, he was with Shigure, and when he wasn't with Shigure, Makoto wouldn't leave his side. She was forced to employ the same strategy she had used in her first conversation with Makoto. Yuuki's tiny back hit the wall, and he let out a noise of surprise. The resulting shockwave knocked her across the yard. Its force answered the majority of her questions. She decided not to speak to him again.

For lack of viable conversation partners, she dragged Makoto aside. His eyes, already magnified by his glasses, widened evermore at the sight of the cuts on her arms and knees. "I'm gonna get an adult." He said and pulled away, no doubt eager to get her some medical assistance.

Nenene shook her head and spat at the dirt. "Idiot can't even control his power right, but he's strong as hell." Then, with emphasis, "This is stupid."

"You mean Yuu?"

"Who else? I don't care what they say, that guy's gonna get a big X on his face in no time if he doesn't get a hang of that."

For the first time in their short acquaintance the smile dropped from Makoto's face. "You think so?"

"Yeah I think so." It was a lie motivated by spite. She did not understand Eden's infatuation with Yuuki, but she was all too aware of it.

"What can we do?"

Sometimes Makoto's gullibility disgusted her, but in this case she found she felt a little guilty. Yuuki's lack of control was a real problem after all, and the threat of becoming a failure loomed over them all. "Well, maybe you could get him something so he can say stuff without talking. Y'know for times when he's sick or whatever like he was a while back."

Makoto's face bunched up in deep concentration. "But I don't know about anything that," but he did. The wrinkles cleared from his face. "Wait! I've got an idea! Thanks, Nenene!" he ran off, beaming like the sun.

The next day she went looking for Makoto to ask about his plan. She found him by the garden with Yuuki and Shigure. Yuuki had a straight key on his lap, and the three of them were huddled around a book full of dashes and dots. Yuuki rapped at the device's lever in varying patterns, long-short-long in turn, and Makoto and Shigure took turns picking words and phrases from the buzz. She let out a snort and turned on her heel.

Two days later Yuuki awoke to find a book on vocal control and voice training outside his door. Neither Makoto nor Shigure could explain its presence, but he had a few educated guesses. He left a Nyanmaru book at the foot of Nenene's bed in return.

* * *

><p>A month to the day that Yuuki had received his mysterious gift the Prime Minister came to visit.<p>

* * *

><p>"Hey, Makoto. Where's that weird girl who you were always talking to? I haven't heard her lately."<p>

Makoto's face fell. "I dunno. I haven't seen her since last week."

"I bet she's an X-mark." Shigure said.

The trio lapsed into silence. They never spoke of her again.

* * *

><p>Nenene Fujiwara, Code:04, returned home to find Masaomi Heike standing in the middle of her room. He held a Nyanmaru doll in his hands. He was smiling. "I see. So you really do like it don't you?"<p>

She crossed the floor in two bounds and snatched the doll from him. "No you idiot! This is just that new guy's. He left this shit here!" A barely visible blush of embarrassment betrayed her lies.

"And why would he do that?" Heike inquired, raising hypothetical eyebrow.

"I dunno. Probably a gift or something." She tossed the doll into a corner. It bounced from the wall onto her pillow. "You know how that freak is. What are you even doing here? This is a lady's room. Get the fuck out!" She pushed her palms into the small of his back and forced him out the door.

"Is that how a lady talks?"

"It's how I talk!"

"Well then, I think-"

Nenene slammed the door behind him and closed the latch. It made a satisfying click, much like one she'd heard a decade past. Phantom memories of a home long-abandoned and people long-forgotten came and vanished in an instant, just as they had when she caught sight of the newest Code:Breaker for the first time.

She ignored them in favor of cursing some more.


	75. Echo

Nearly a week had passed since Hitomi had moved into Shibuya mansion with the intention of becoming strong enough to protect everyone. He'd spent the majority of that time wearing a mascot costume of some cartoon cat that he'd seen everywhere, but whose name eluded him. He didn't so much mind the embarrassment as he did the pace. Hitomi had never been one to rush in the past, but now every day that he spent training was another day that his juniors were fighting alone. This concern strengthened his resolve to ask Shibuya for a faster way to become stronger.

On the eight day of his apprenticeship there was a noise at the front door. Hitomi tucked the head of his costume under his arm and made his way down the stairs, determined to confront Shibuya about his sluggish methods.

The man that he found in the front hallway was not wearing a costume. The man standing in the front hallway was not Shibuya at all. He was a little taller, almost certainly younger, and had a mild musculature that Shibuya lacked on the few occasions Hitomi had caught him out of costume. He reeked of blood.

Hitomi paused on the last step and cleared his throat.

The stranger looked up. "Master, I," he paused, raising two arctic eyebrows in surprise. "Who are you?"

Too confused and too lethargic to concoct a clever response, Hitomi gave his name.

"Oh. So you're the new code:01." The stranger held out a hand, though it didn't seem intended as a friendly gesture. "My name is 'Seeker.' I'm here studying under Shibuya as well."

"So you're the one Shibuya said was staying in room number six?"

"Yes. But not for long. And you're in room number one?"

"Not for long." Hitomi echoed with a smile.

The door knocked open and Shibuya stumbled in, effectively interrupting their conversation. He ordered them to help carry the rest, and they complied.

Seeker abandoned Eden no more than a month later.

Hitomi mimicked his departure within years.


	76. Mourning

WARNING: CHARACTER DEATH. Or rather it's post-character death.

AU in which Sakura is killed in some kind of accident.

* * *

><p>In the weeks following Sakura's death they tried to hold everything together. None of them were strangers to death. Over the years, they had necessitated hundreds of burials among them, most, but not all, at the orders of Eden.<p>

And they managed.

It wasn't for lack of mourning, for her death was devastating. But it was as sudden as it was crushing, and they were left numb from shock. Despite the funeral, despite the quiet, despite the obituary that they had all helped write, it did not occur to them that she was gone for nearly two weeks. None of them shed tears over her grave. Ogami still flinched away from the hole in his wall every morning in anticipation of a greeting that would never come again. Rui set out seven plates at every meal. Toki, when Lost, would gravitate to the room at the end of the hallway in the morning, and Yuuki would leave an empty spot on the couch when Nyanmaru came on the TV.

Two weeks. And then the phantom habits faded, leaving only epiphany in their wake.

Inside of the student council room Nenene asked Heike where Hii-tan and Mii-tan had gone, and he was unable to provide her with an answer.

The stitches Sakura had sewn started to wear and pop. It started simply. Days filled with lethargy gave way to hours of arguments. Yuuki and Toki's formerly harmless banter mutated into poisoned words and senseless attacks. Rui could not garner the will to give them both concussions, and Ogami seemed unconcerned with anything other than finding revenge against happenstance. Two days passed before Toki left the mansion, dragging all of his possessions behind him. No one made any effort to make him stay.

Yuuki remained sullen after Toki's departure. He growled and snapped and alternated between eating all too little and all too much. Rui's half-hearted attempts at calming him were meaningless. No one was surprised when they awoke one morning to discover that he'd simply disappeared.

In the weeks and months following the accident Shibuya kept to himself, locked in the passages far below the mansion where time was meaningless. For all intents and purposes, Rui and Ogami were the only ones that still resided there. To say that they lived would be misleading. Rui performed her chores in mechanical bursts, not daring to put her heart into them lest she notice that the loads of laundry she washed were growing smaller by the day. One Sunday evening she hefted a stack of folded shirts, and noticed that none of them belonged to Rei. And just like that she found herself alone in the mansion with only a man in a suit and a mourning dog to keep her company.

Unlike Toki, who had moved far away, and Yuuki who left no trace, she only had to turn on the news to know where Ogami had gone. He burned swathes through the country, leaving nothing but the charred fat of petty criminals and delinquents behind. Blue flames scorched the land for nearly a year before the stories came to an abrupt end in an azure inferno.

Sakurako had been missing for months.

Aoba had done little but kill for just as long.

And Rui managed because she didn't know what else to do.


	77. Conversation

Yukihina trusted Seeker. He would not follow him otherwise. If he had a life, he would place it in his hands without hesitation. This did not mean that he never doubted him. Today, for example, was the sort of day when he wondered if Seeker was a horrible judge of character.

Rui stared at him, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt.

He stared back, inert.

It had been little more than ten minutes since Kouji and Seeker left the hideout to do this, that, or the other, leaving him behind with Rui for the first time in their brief acquaintance. "I need Kouji for this job, so you will have to watch Rui." Seeker had told him. He had tried to object in his own inaudible way, but Seeker was having none of it. "We can't afford to leave her alone. I'm sure that you can keep her amused somehow." The undercurrents of his tone assured Yukihina that he would be fine, and that taking care of a child wasn't terribly difficult. Then he had left, taking Kouji's paternal instincts with him.

Years of watching Seeker care for his little brother had not proved educational. Yukihina knew very little about caring for children, but he was sure that whatever Seeker was doing was not the best way to go about it. Unfortunately, knowing what was bad and knowing what was good were two different things.

Rui cleared her throat. Jagged locks of hair hung limp around her face. They hadn't had time to grow much since she had entered into their care. "I'm hungry."

Yukihina stood, grabbed a can from their stock of food, and handed it to her.

"I can't eat this. It's not open."

He took the can, pulled a Swiss Army knife from his pocket, opened it, and handed it back.

"Where are the forks? Or chopsticks?"

Yukihina pointed at a bundle of knives they had in the corner- they had never bothered with more complicated silverware. If their sustenance was liquid, they drank it. If it was solid, they stabbed it. Any intervening cutlery was superfluous.

Rui fetched one and settled back into her chair to eat. "Do you want some too?"

He shook his head.

"Okay. Thanks for the food."

It was amazing how much her manner of speaking had changed over the month or so they'd had her. Yukihina suspected that she was switching over to a tone that matched Kouji's. The thought amused him.

"When do you think they'll be back?"

"I'm not sure." He replied, glancing out the window. Hopefully sooner rather than later- it wasn't that he minded watching her. It was more that he was unsure of what to do. He couldn't remember the last time that he had attempted to speak with a child. Had he ever talked to Rei? He wasn't sure.

It seemed that he had never spoken to Rui either. A pleasantly surprised smile tiptoed to her lips. "How long've you been friends with Kouji?"

And Yukihina answered.

Seeker and Kouji returned an hour or so later to find Rui and Yukihina having a relatively fluid conversation. Kouji raised his eyebrows in mild surprise, and Seeker strode over and clapped Yukihina on the back. "Did anything interesting happen while I was gone?" _I'm glad that you two are getting along. _

Yukihina choked on a sentence, shocked out of whatever conversational rhythm he'd set. He excused himself and vacated the room, leaving a series of relieved smiles in his wake.


	78. Impressed

"Hey, Magness. What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Toki rested his eyes on the horizon, trying to come up with an answer. He would have liked to tell his sister the truth if he could, but there was no truth to be told. Nenene had 'died,' taking his future with her. He had committed to becoming a Code:Breaker to draw blood for lost blood. At the time he had thought that he knew everything that there was to know about being a dog of Eden. You became a nonexistent. You threw away your past, your name, and your family for the sake of a higher cause, and your own ambition. What he had only later learned was that it meant discarding your future as well.

"I'm going to be a hero of justice, and be stronger than ever so I can protect the whole world." He said, face deadpan, and arms spread wide. "I'm going to kick the asses of every bad guy, and save the planet."

Nenene wiggled around on her elbows to get a better look at him. She seemed duly impressed as always. "Woooah, that's great, Magness! Then what?"

Yes. And then what? Proud as he was, strong as he was, he was no fool. The world was full of people who were just as strong, full of people who were just as smart, and there would be no easy end to the battle against evil. It was not as simple as he'd described it, and never would be- the war would continue into the boundless future that he'd forfeited, and if there was no evil to be had then evil would simply gain a broader definition. "Then," he said trying to find the right words, "Then I'll come back here and we'll have a huge party in honor of how great I am."

"Can I come?"

"Sure! You can be the guest of honor. After me of course."

"Can Hii-tan and Mii-tan come?"

"Wouldn't be a party without them."

"And Rei? And Yuuki?"

Toki's face twisted into a grimace. "Yeah, sure. I guess they can come."

"That's great, Magness!" Nenene beamed.

"Yeah." He replied. "Yeah, it'll be great."


	79. Birthday

Despite his sensitive ears, Yuuki was not a light sleeper. He did not wake up when Yukihina entered his room, nor when he slung him over his shoulder. The jump out the window did not rouse him, and he did little other than snore for most of the walk. Yukihina had been relying on that.

There had not been much time to plan. The morning before Rui had asked if he wanted to go shopping with her. She was going to bake a cake, she'd said, and wondered if he might be interested in helping. He had inquired why she thought he might want to bake anything, and she had replied that the next day was Yuuki's birthday.

Yukihina was not terribly good at sentimentality, nor compassion. Long ago, in the days before Rui's birth, he and Kouji had promised not to bother with such troublesome things as birthdays. Neither aged, and after the third birthday of stasis, it all felt just a little pointless. But Yuuki was different. He was still a kid- young- when birthdays were a magical time of year when anything and everything could happen, and the orbit of the earth abandoned its axis to spin around the birthday child. This was all the more important, he reasoned, for a nonexistent like Yuuki. He thought that it might be worth making an exception.

It was nothing special really, because Yukihina was not terribly good at giving gifts. Whether it would constitute as a gift at all was a genuine concern.

Several miles into the mountains, in a clearing that he had found on one of his solitary walks, he threw Yuuki onto a blanket he had set out earlier. It seemed that this, finally, was enough to wake him. Still clad in his bright red sweatpants and oversized shirt, Yuuki pushed himself upright and peered around. He stared at the scenery with mild indifference until his eyes came to rest on Yukihina. "Yukinko. Where're we?" he inquired.

Yukihina jerked his thumb to the side. Yuuki scrambled over to make room for him on the blanket, and he sat down next to him.

"Why're we here?"

"Listen."

And Yuuki listened. He sat with rapt attention, staring off at some point in the darkness for nearly an hour, soaking in the chorus of the wind and leaves- the bats and the bugs- the rhythm of raindrops three miles to the east, and the strains of civilization so far away that they were almost phantasmal.

Just as Yukihina thought that he might have to recapture his attention, Yuuki turned and the lights of the stars reflected in his eyes. "You can hear lots from up here."

Yukihina nodded.

"I don't get to leave the city lots. It's always really noisy there and you can't hear this stuff."

Yukihina nodded again.

"Why're we here?"

Moments passed, and a multitude of sounds imperceptible to the human ear hummed along around them. Eventually Yukihina reached out and ruffled Yuuki's hair. "Happy birthday."

Yuuki's eyebrows raised a minutia in a way that Yukihina had come to interpret as a smile. "Thanks, Yukinko."

"Let's go back."

"Can we come back here?"

"If you want."

"Okay." Yuuki scrambled up onto his shoulders and pointed towards the twinkling lights of civilization. "Let's go." And they started the long walk home.


	80. Riverbank

Whispers of another form of justice first reached Hitomi's ears when he was fifteen.

Some Code:Breakers learned of Eden through acquaintances. Others were born and raised for the sole purpose of becoming its dogs. Hitomi did not fall into either of these categories.

Much of his childhood had been spent in relative isolation. "Sometimes people aren't very nice to you if you're special." His parents had explained. "So you have to be careful that they don't find out." It was easier said than done. Crowds mixed and mingled at school, and many of his early years had been a desperate struggle to wrangle his powers so that they didn't fly out of control at an inopportune moment. When he was five his mother sheared most of the hair from his head in an attempt to hide the odd angles that it would pull into at a small loss of concentration. When that failed and the children became suspicious of the amount of static he generated on a daily basis, his parents had pulled him from the class.

He had been allowed to return for middle school, but by that time many of his peers had formed friendships, and he found it difficult to insert himself into existing social circles. Evenings and afternoons were spent with the solitary sound of the river rather than friends. It was on the riverbank, floating in a surreal realm between sleep and waking, that he first heard the term "Code:Breaker." Whispers of special powers and enforcers of justice that prowled the night drew his attention, and the uniforms of those discussing them held it. He followed their conversation as long as the sounds lingered in the air.

The sun fell, the officers' discussion meandered into different waters, and Hitomi pulled himself to his feet. Listening to them had been an interesting diversion, but a diversion all the same. He did not think much of it until ten months later when a man in a suit appeared at his door with an offer that he feared he could not refuse.


	81. Revenge

Yukihina is not sure what Kouji is planning, but he thinks that he has an idea. Too many years- too many _centuries_ have passed since they met, and he knows the forced look of ferocity in his eyes, and the slight shift in the grate of his voice.

Code:04, a boy that he has encountered several times yet knows very little about, is screaming and yelling- Something about revenge, about a little sister, about death and death in turn. At first it seemed that Kouji genuinely could not recall what he was shrieking about, but an enunciated declaration of family resemblance seemed to spark some recognition in his eyes, and he began to bluff.

Months or even years may pass between the times that Yukihina sees Kouji. Over the decades they have been ripped apart and thrown together again and again by the whims of the man that they have entrusted their lives too. Yukihina concedes that it is theoretically possible that Kouji had slaughtered a young woman in front of her brother during one of those distant days, but finds it unlikely. Kouji does kill, and he has killed many, but he never forgets. He will change the topic or bury his words in a flask of alcohol if asked, but Yukihina _knows_.

And so he waits as the rain beats down and soaks into his clothing. The drop in temperature has ceased to bother him centuries ago, on the day when his body fell to ice. He waits because he wants to see what Kouji will do. Because he wants to know what frivolous ideal he is upholding this time. Because he trusts Kouji's judgment and has decided not to interfere. He watches as Kouji throws the boy's broken body the Rare Kind, and as Rei scolds him back to lucidity despite his grievous wounds.

When the time comes Yukihina follows Kouji back to the hotel. He makes sure that his flask is full, and that Hiyori does not bother him. He leaves him be for an hour to tell Seeker about the encounter at Shibuya mansion, and returns with a half-empty bottle of whiskey. He places it on the end table, leans against the wall, and waits.

Kouji clears his throat, clasps his hands between his knees, and seems to think better of it.

Decades of experience tell Yukihina that he will not hear why Kouji has lied tonight. This does not bother him.. He can wait. He has nothing but time on his hands.


	82. Uniform

It was a good thing that Yuuki had learned not to care. It was easy once he'd tried- the world had been against him from the moment he had been born with the sole exception of Makoto, and apathy towards its inhabitants came naturally.

His seniors and juniors came and went in an endless uniform march of death, and he survived because it was all that he knew how to do. In the face of his bullies he had sworn a vow of compassion, but rather than absorbing kindness, he wore it as a shell that coated whatever was left inside.

There were one or two who showed interest in him, and managed to leave a significant impression. They were the ones who listened when he spoke, and accept his gifts with expressions of joy. Yuuki supposed that he liked them, and when they accepted his kindness his superficial coating of caring dissolved and soaked down inside and under his skin. He let them get close- but not too close, because that was damaging. Emotional distance was vital.

Yuuki was good at it. It came naturally, just as most other things had a tendency to.

Hitomi could not tell. He viewed him as a child, with all the vulnerabilities there-of, and so he treated him as one, and no matter how much he wished that he wouldn't, Yuuki liked him. So when a Nyanmaru keychain fell into a puddle of blood and another rank above him ripped opened with the swing of a knife, he let Hitomi hide the corpse from his vision with an improvised blindfold of calloused fingers and attempt to console him. Little words of comfort and heaven and better places pattered around him like rain and for a moment Yuuki wished that he was the child that Hitomi thought he was.


	83. Slaughter

0. Yukihina

The first time that Hina kills it is with some reluctance. He wrestles with the duty that has been assigned to him, and his morals, and when that struggle ends he finds that he is at war once again with making his opponent's death swift and the hesitation that prevents him from doing so. In his reluctance, his adversary finds time to strike at him and he retaliates reflexively. Ice shards pierce the heart of the 'evil,' and they fall dead. Hina feels something, perhaps restraint or perhaps reluctance, die inside of him and knows that he will never be the same again.

The first time that Yuki kills it feels like coming home and he's not sure why.

02.

It is war. The rules are changed during war. Lives become resources to be bought and lost through means of loyalty and weaponry, and Heike knows this more than anyone. He watches time and time again as power users are slaughtered for the sake of king and country from behind the dubious protection of his uniform and his secret.

This is the way that cowards act, and he is aware of it. He is not fond of experimentation, nor the creation of weapons from humans, but he is aware that if he attempts to stop it then he will only find himself under suspicion, and from there under the microscope.

When the time finally comes, when he has run out of excuses and he is ordered to kill one of his own kind, one of the very people he's admired for so long for daring not to hide, he is too scared of exposure to rebel. Killing is an odious task, and the way that the blood stains his sword and soaks into his uniform and the feel of muscles parting under his blade make him feel ill. He tries not to look at the corpse's face and covers it all up with a smile because he knows no other way to cope. He despises himself.

So when the Emperor appears, cloaked in a mantle of flames and offering another path- a better path- it never occurs to him to refuse.

* * *

><p>AN: This is going to be a part of a series of drabbles that will hopefully cover every Code:Breaker's first kill. To clarify for the first one- "Hina" refers to Yukihina when he became the first Code:Breaker, and "Yuki" refers to him after his 'death' and memory loss. Both are the nicknames that people called him during these periods. Enjoy!


	84. Two-Tone

01.

They ease him into it.

When Hitomi receives his first orders as a Code:Breaker, he wonders if he'll be able to do it- if he'll be able to take another human life no matter how evil or how awful the opponent. Because for all that he likes the idea of justice, he does not believe that human beings come in black and white- there are many shades of grey along the lines.

Eden knows of these doubts and they choose well.

The man he's sent to kill has a gun to a little girl's head, and promises to pull the trigger.

His supporters scream in his earpiece, demanding that he kill before she dies- they list the gruesome details of his crimes and describe in graphic detail just what his target had intended to do to the girl before he'd arrived. Killing him is easy once he's ensured that the girl is safe, and he does not lose much sleep over it.

The next man is a little less odious, and the next and the next in decreasing aggression until he finds himself murdering a witness who'd simply been in the wrong place in the wrong time, and he wonders when the world became a two-tone mess of good and evil.


	85. Stall

04-1.

Nenene does not need to remind herself that this is what she was born for. Her childhood, her education, her parentage and her strictly tutored moral code have all led up to this moment.

So when they point her in a direction and say "kill" she kills.

It's messier than they'd said. There's blood all over the ground, all over her uniform, and all over the piece of rebar she'd used as a spear. Her handlers congratulate her on a job well done and whisk her away to get her a change of clothes and return her to the place that she's only just learning to call home.

The next day on the way to school she pauses at the execution grounds. The asphalt is pure and black and dry- feet ahead and yards behind little oases of heat flicker like water – she wonders how they managed to clean out all of that stalling blood for a brief moment, decides that it is unimportant, and carries on with her walk.


	86. Toys

"Holy- How the fuck did you get in here?"

Yuuki did not answer; he simply stared around the residence. It was small and cramped. The walls were covered in scuff marks from moving furniture, the carpet was stained with substances that he cannot name and stippled with cigarette ash, and the couch appeared to have been pulled from a back alley somewhere. This was the first time that Yuuki has been inside a 'home.' He thought that it was probably nice- to have one that was.

"Hey kid! You even listening to me?"

A little less than a week had passed since Yuuki's thirteenth birthday. Rather than receiving presents, he received the title and the number that he had been raised for all his life. He did not like the gift, but he supposed that it made sense.

The man in front of him, the balding, smelly, and beer-battered wreck of an individual, was his second gift; a target.

In a rash of rebellion he had insisted that Nyanmaru wouldn't kill the man in the apartment. He would just beat him up and then talk to him to make sure that he didn't do anything bad ever again.

This man didn't look very bad.

He wasn't wearing a costume, nor was he cackling or taunting. He simply wanted to know why Yuuki was in his apartment. Yuuki was wondering the same thing.

Come to think of it, hadn't the villains always come to Nyanmaru first? Or gone out to attack innocent people? Nyanmaru had never gone to the villains. (So wasn't he a little like them this way? The unsettling feeling shook him momentarily.)

The man lifted himself from his couch and lumbered over, an empty bottle held loosely by its neck. Alcohol sloshed around inside of it, pulling an unsettling rhythm along the air. "I don't know how you got in here, but if you don't get the fuck out I'm gonna bash in your skull."

That was more like it- he was behaving like a villain now. Yuuki knew how to deal with villains. Nyanmaru had shown him a little, and his teachers back at Eden (for all that he hates them) had shown him more in response to his outburst. Nyanmaru's opponents always came back. This was because they did not die, his teachers had explained. This was a ploy in order to make more episodes and gain more money. Yuuki understood this. Nyanmaru only beat his opponents up because then there could be more episodes and he could teach more people good lessons, and so there could be more toys and books and other things. But because they came back they always ended up hurting more people.

Yuuki knew another way. A better way, if his teachers were to be believed.

So he started to hum. The windows shivered, shook, and vibrated along until they coul no longer stand the strain and they shattered, leaving drifts of glass inside and outside of the walls. The bottle of beer burst, cutting furrows through the man's palm. His eyes rolled back. Blood trickled from his ears and he collapsed.

Yuuki knew of death, but his sense of it was unreal- fractured. Makoto was dead because he could not move or speak. This body was also dead because it could not move or speak.

Various lessons had taught him that he should leave immediately after a kill and entrust the clean-up to his supporters. Instead he lingered and stared at the body and its home with the vague feeling that he had done something bad.


	87. Machinations

"Are you sure about this? Are you sure that you can do this?"

It is difficult to see doubts from behind the haze of rage through which he views the world. His sister is dead, and her husk is weak- so terribly weak. She's nothing more than a child now- a little less than the girl who'd called him an angel on the day she'd met him, and their father is unwilling to see it. If Toki does not fight then she will he has said. Regardless, someone needs to mete out justice against the man that killed his sister, and if not he then it will be someone else. He cannot bear the thought of someone else skewering the man who took away the girl that he'd come to think of as his angel. (Perhaps a little rough, perhaps a little crude, but an angel nonetheless.)

He nods because shock still holds his voice hostage no matter how much time has passed, and crosses the threshold of his target's property.

It is a large house- not unlike the one that he shares with his father and his sister's animated corpse. (Her reflection- her raw ingredients- the thing that will be changed by this brave new world with no hope of emerging the same as she was before.) While he himself has never been here before, he's heard his father tell of this place. It is a 'friend's' house. His father has many 'friends' with whom he is only friendly for the sake of politics. His father is a sly man. Toki knows this, and up until now has held some sort of awe and admiration for it. Up until now he has never been on the far side of his father's machinations. There is no front walk- only a long and winding driveway, and Toki takes his time traversing it. The vague knowledge that he is being manipulated, and that his sister is but a prod to drive him in any which direction, does not bother him because this is what he wants. Revenge is what he wants. And he is going to have it. And if he has to step on a few heads to get there? Then that's just what he'll do.

This 'friend' of his father's, this first stepping stone on his path to a resolution, is just that: a step. His death will be a foothold. Toki takes pride in his ability to put this into perspective.

He rings the bell, and a middle-aged man answers. He looks out ahead, then adjusts his gaze down. (Toki is little more than a child now after all, though he's loathe to admit it.)

Several pieces of rebar that his supporters have provided shift in the bushes, and he prepares a strike, but is caught off guard when his stepping stone breaks into a strangely human smile and spreads his arms. "Well, well, well! What have we here? Aren't you Fujiwara's son?"

Toki's jaw mimes speech but makes no noise. He gapes.

"Oh, don't be so surprised. Your father's told me so much about you. He showed me a few pictures a while back... I have a pretty good memory for faces. Why are you here? Are you lost? Would you like me to call your father?"

Toki shakes his head for he no longer has any father to call, no matter what this man might believe. But some desperate sense of nostalgia, some longing for normalcy, betrays him. He lets the man usher him into his house, lets him give him tea, and lets him speak about this and that for nearly an hour. The cell phone that his supporters gave him vibrates angrily in his pocket for a brief period, but then falls still. He checks the text inquiring if he needs assistance with vague disinterest, and replies that he is fine. His father's 'friend' asks him if something is the matter and he speaks if only to say that he's told his father where he is and that he will pick him up soon.

"Oh, good. I imagine that he was worried. I was worried for a minute there- thought you were running away from home!" he laughs heartily.

Toki does not laugh. It rings too true to be funny.

"Bet your sister- Nenene was it? I bet she was worried too. Your father talks about her a lot too, though he hasn't mentioned her as much lately. I wonder why..."

Toki jolts at the name of his sister, and purpose flows renewed in his veins. Though it pains him to do so, though he has to look away, though the act makes the tea rise out of his gut and into his mouth, he calls out to the knives in the kitchen. They come hurtling through the air and strike their target dead.

The stepping stone has served its purpose. An angry buzz of activity bursts through the front door and agents surround him.

"You've done a good job," they say.

"We'll take care of it from here," they promise.

Toki nods, leaves the house, and empties the contents of his stomach into the bushes.


	88. Comrade

Though it has been over a year since Kouji had dubbed her his comrade and brother in arms, she has still not fought by his side. The battles that the Re:Codes invite are incredibly intense and just as deadly, and a child of her stature and skill has no place in them. On occasion Rui asks to join, but Kouji shakes his head. She is not ready yet, he says. Not yet ready to take a life. Not yet strong enough to avoid losing her own.

During these days she is relegated to the sidelines, and she watches as the people that have replaced her family battle and bleed and butcher across battlefield after battlefield.

She's seen more blood in the past week than she has seen in her life.

Apparently there are people in Japan, and these people are very angry at Seeker. They will not tell her why, though they leave promises behind, and they will not tell her who, and refuse to guarantee answers. Today is relatively calm. Their opponents are people without powers- the people whose danger resides in their guns and their fists. They fire entire magazines into Yukihina's chest but he does not flinch. Bombs detonate under Seeker's tread, but he is gone before they burst.

And Kouji? Kouji kills. The first time that she saw him in battle she had been terrified. The Kouji that she'd known had been kind and cautious, always reserved and a little smug- but not overly-so. A little stubborn around women, and never without a flask of whiskey. When Kouji kills he does it with the smile of a wolf and the intensity of an inferno. Everything falls to his void, and the blood flows through the gaps in the concrete like rivers. He becomes lost in the battle.

Rui has decided to become his eyes because they become clouded with blood lust in times like these, and she has seen Yukihina save him more than once. But one day Yukihina will forget and Kouji will have no one to watch his back. (Certainly not Seeker- he respects them all far too much and trusts them too much to even conceive of the idea that they might require someone to save them.)

Today Rui is the one that spots the danger. There is a man lying in the rubble not far from her hiding place, the butt of a gun pressed to his shoulder, and an eye pressed to a scope. He does not see her- he is far too focused on his target. Kouji. It is not that these strangers in suits have not attempted to shoot them down from afar before- it is simply the first time that this has happened in battle. Kouji is too lost in the fight to notice, and if Yukihina or Seeker have, they have done nothing to warn him. The agent's finger ducks in front of the trigger and moves breath by breath.

Rui has seen people take bullets before. She has seen far more of it than she would like in the past year, and she has watched Yukihina lose a large chunk of his head on more than one occasion. If she does not act soon, then Kouji will face the same fate. As far as she knows (and she knows well) Kouji does not have the same regenerative properties that Yukihina does. She has tended to his wounds- has bound them and cleaned them and worked as best as she could to prevent infection. If Kouji is hit by this unseen bullet then he will surely die.

It is time that she begins to think of herself as one of them- As she never has before. Because she's always been their companion, but never a killer. Never one of the Re:Codes- just a tag-along that they've been kind enough to entertain.

But they are her family, and she must protect her family and accept them and this is the life that she has chosen for better or for worse. So in the middle of a battlefield in an unknown country, thousands of miles away from the place she'd once called home, she barrels out of her hiding place, and swings a scythe with the intent to kill. The man and the barrel of his gun fall into two. The threat is neutralized.

Her eyes leap to the battlefield to confirm that Kouji still lives. He stands still in a field of blood and corpses, and rolls his head over a shoulder to look at her. She swears that she sees him smile.


	89. Century

Rei has sworn never to kill. Taking lives is not something to be done lightly, or at all if he can help it. He does not wish to do anything to harm anyone, but this new world that he's been thrown into is strange and violent, and he does not know what to make of it or how to survive inside of its rules.

Things had been peaceful. Perhaps he had sensed tension in the way that his parents spoke, but it had never seemed to matter much. Those were problems for adults, and he was just a child. There were more important things to be concerned about, like how Sakura needed to learn the value of a life, and how Fussy Lunch and his friends kept cheating whenever they played tag. (It wasn't fair that they could run that fast- not at all. They must have been employing some sort of trick.)

Then, one day in the dead of winter, those little hushed discussions he'd overheard behind closed doors burst from speech to action. Corpses littered the world. Swirling blackness devoured the soil. Rei lost his arm and his consciousness and made a deal with a devil.

When he had awoken the world had changed. There were many strange things that he had never seen before- small boxes that could contact people far and away, and large screens that showed fictional life in color.

He does not get to see much of these novelties.

His brother has changed. He is cold and cruel. He is taller, his hair is longer, and an ugly scar mars his face. He's locked him up in chains and told him to follow, and Rei has no choice but to mirror his footsteps across countless countries. The walk is hard, and long, and he often goes without food and water and sleep. The days that he spent with his mother and father feel as if they were a century ago, and are just as intangible as the steam that rises from freshly dismembered bodies in the chill of Yukihina's ice.

This is a new world with new rules. There is good and there is evil, and they are a little of both. There is kill and be killed, and there is life and death and whatever strange area Yukihina occupies in between. It is a world of black and white with a strange little grey overlap that only they seem to occupy. (For as Yukihina is neither alive nor dead, Kouji is neither kind nor cruel, and Seeker is both his brother and a stranger.) The light leaves his eyes, and hope seems meaningless. There is only an endless cycle of death. And for what? He does not know, and they never tell him- they simply drag him around like an object and speak in harsh hushed tones.

Those days are a horrible blur, and he hardly can tell one minute for the next. The years blend together, and the great desire to get away from it all and fulfill the promise that he's made with the devil (which his dreams so often force him to recall) supersedes everything. Morality, principles, hope, and love are all consumed by its ravenous demands for attention. Rei becomes a husk.

Two years after he gained his chains he makes his first attempt at escape. His brother and his companions have grown complacent and offer him some degree of freedom, knowing that his inability to communicate with the locals and his age will likely prevent him from getting very far. In the dead of night, while Yukihina is distracted by a spatter of gunfire outside, he flees. The threadbare fabric of his shirt muffles the clink of chains. He runs nearly a mile before he has to stop to catch his breath. Almost immediately he is cornered- the wall that he'd used to prop himself up serves to trap him as two men with guns approach, carelessly slapping the barrels against their palms.

"Hey, look. It's a kid. What the hell is a kid doing out here?"

"Fuck if I know. Hey, kid! Where are your parents?"

Rei does not answer. He struggles with his shirt to hide his shackles, but the shift causes the chain to fall from its hiding place.

The men stare, and one begins to grin. "Huh. Looks like this kid might be worth something to us."

"What do you mean?"

"Someone's keeping him locked up. Bet they'd pay a pretty good price to have him back. Bet we could make some cash. Hey, kid. You're coming with us."

Rei does not move.

The man seems upset- he grabs Rei by the wrist and yanks.

The rules are different now in this brave new world. It's kill or be killed.

So Rei wraps his left hand around the man's wrist and he is engulfed with flame. His dying screams echo from the walls, and his partner lets out a thin shriek of surprise.

"What the fuck- what did you do?"

Rei does not answer. He watches the flames flicker and the body within them crumble to ash.

"What did you do to him!?" The remaining assailant lifts his gun and flicks off the safety.

Rei reaches out his hand. It feels hot- too hot. His thoughts are in disarray- floating- and a chill creeps up his spine. He is not sure if he can burn this man, but he has no choice. Kill or be killed. An eye lest you lose an eye, a tooth lest you lose a tooth, and-

Ice shards bloom from the man's chest, and he topples over. Blood splatters across Rei's face. He swipes some off and examines it with dizzy confusion. Yukihina stands before him. "We're going back."

Rei does not resist.


	90. Acontium

They have pushed Lily.

Oh God have the pushed her- right up to the edge. She's lived a life of violence despite her otherwise fortunate circumstances- a home with two parents with steady jobs- opportunities and access to a good education- a country with a growing economy that encourages an abundance of jobs for the day when she does manage to graduate... Provided that she reaches it.

Every advantage that she has been given has been twisted and turned against her: converted into a weapon.

Her parents reject her and beat her, flinging slurs and screams that attack her very existence. They push and pull and do everything but throw her from the house because they know just as well as she does that it was their influence- their very genes- that gave her the traits that they despise.

School, which had initially been a refuge, becomes a place of equal terror. They uncover her secret, and the verbal abuse diffuses across the barrier between her family and her peers. This is a place of education and vocabulary and they come up with new and innovative barbs with which to rip her apart. While her parents turn her name to a curse, the other children don't even bother to use it. They have better words- They call her "monster," "aconitum," and, when she grows a little older, "serpent woman." They extinguish their cigarettes against her skin, and splash bleach across her face.

For years and years she covers her scars with the very power that instigated their infliction, nursing her resentment under a thin film not unlike the one that she wears on her skin. She is a monster, is she? Are they not the monsters? What human could possibly treat another in this way? What has she done to deserve this? Nothing. It was as if they had smelled difference upon her and swarmed like predators to a feast, to pick at her bones until there was nothing left. They do not know that Lily is not prey. She is a reluctant hunter, but they are wearing down her patience with every bit of skin they shave off. The rage within her writhes... It boils. Human? No. While they may call her a monster, she is the only human here.

Near the end of her second year of middle school a group of girls- the most vicious of the pack- corner her behind the gym. They push her against the concrete walls and leer. "Hey, you're lookin' pretty happy today, aren't you, Monster?"

In the past she would lower her gaze and stay silent. In the past it had always been easier to stay quiet and still and let them strip whatever meat they wanted until they grew bored and left. But the weight of years cuts down on her, and she cannot stand it any longer. She resolves that there will be no more beatings- no more insults. She dons the smile that she wears these days much like she wears the coating that covers her scars, and grabs the face of her closest tormentor. The skin under her palm bubbles, burns, and melts. The girl lets out a shriek more fitted for beast than man and thrashes, but Lily grabs her wrist and does not let go. And she melts.

The others scream and flee, but she remembers their faces- has seen them too many times behind a haze of too much pain to ever forget.

She cannot go back to school after this- cannot go back home. But she finds that she does not care because a man in white has told her that she is wonderful, and has given her a kiss, her very first kiss, on the lips.

There is nothing to stay here for anyway.

Months later, when the girl dies on the operating table in an attempt to restore what is left of her face and skull, Lily is countries away and has long ceased to care.


	91. Answer

Kill? Can he kill? Shiwon is not sure if he can to be honest, but the men from Eden need an answer, and they are demanding that he give it now. This is a competitive position, and there are other people- a whole farm's worth of children- that they can find to take it.

So he tells them 'yes' because he's never had any particular moral objections to killing before. He's never entertained the thought of causing death, though he has beaten other kids half-way there on more than one occasion after class lets out and he's free to wander without adults asking inconvenient questions.

But even with that- even after all that he's done so far and all that he would have done otherwise, it's difficult. There's a line between beating and killing- sometimes it's hard to see, and sometimes it is accidentally crossed, but he recognizes its existence all the same.

So he turns his targets to paper and rips them to shreds because it's easier when they don't look so... human. And that works well enough.

Shiwon can kill.


	92. January 1st

Masaomi did not want apologies- not today of all days.

Fortunately the Emperor was not there to give them. He wasn't anywhere anymore really- the last time that Masaomi had seen him was in an inverted silhouette, the one spot of light in the face of a wall of nothingness. Then he had winked out.

January 1st- it was a day that he'd never anticipated. Everything had crumbled down around him- lives melted into the negation one by one, and it devoured the corpses, the air, the debris... Everything. There was nothing to indicate that any battle had taken place aside from an oppressive silence that shook the air. Everything, absolutely everything, was gone.

He watched the remnants of the battlefield. A few others had gathered, standing behind some invisible line that they dared not cross, to stare at the blank surface of the earth.

This was his fault.

If he had only listened to Yukihina, or if he had been a little smarter... A little more suspicious and a little less trusting, then perhaps all of these people wouldn't have died. There were so many times in the past when he could have diverted this course. He could have spoken to Sakurako about her new husband, or he could have ensured that Fujiwara and the Emperor never met. What the Emperor could have done... What Fujiwara could have done... What Sakurako could have done to prevent all of this didn't occur to him, and it didn't matter. Following a hopeless fool had been his mistake. He'd been taken in by his naivety- had wanted to walk in the sun and soak in the light that it shed. He'd wanted to carve out a new world where they could live. He had wanted everyone to be happy, and had decided to trust the Emperor when he'd said it was possible. No matter how many times he'd wondered if the man had his head screwed on right, and no matter how many times that little bit of doubt the army had gouged into him had whispered that things couldn't possibly stay this good forever, he'd trusted him. Something would have to go wrong eventually. The world was not a story geared towards happily-ever-afters. He'd lived through too much to hold the illusion of a happy future.

Emperor had made him want to believe.

It was tempting, ever so tempting, to push the blame upon him and demand an apology, but Emperor had disappeared just as the negation had, and had left Heike with no one to blame other than himself. (And he could never hate Emperor for having the hope that he so desired.)

Sakurako had left having lost her daughter to a box, and Zed had wandered off hand in hand with a quartet of undead. Yukihina had disappeared a mere hour after Heike had secured his safety, and Shibuya had stumbled off into disguise after disguise.

Of the people who held responsibility for the bloodshed, only Masaomi remained.

Only Masaomi and...

"It's beautiful isn't it?"

Fujiwara grinned out at the emptiness from several feet to his right. Masaomi was not sure when he had arrived, but he had known that he would come eventually- Come to the battlefield that he had chosen and stare at the stagnant landscape with a little bit of madness reflected in his eyes. If only Masaomi hadn't been so enamored with Emperor's determination and had noticed that spark a little earlier, then perhaps he could have done something.

"You know, Masaomi, I've heard that you and the others have dissolved Eden and gone your separate ways. It would be a real shame to get rid of the thing that all of you worked so hard to start, wouldn't it?" Fujiwara beamed at him, and Masaomi wondered how he could smile like that when it had been less than a day... A mere matter of hours... "Yes, it would be a shame. I always liked your Eden. I think that it's just the thing that this world needs right now, don't you? I'd like to take it off your hands. I think that I- no, I think that we could do great things. Don't you, Masaomi?" He held out his hand seeking confirmation of a deal that he'd hardly proposed.

Masaomi stared at his hand, a hand soaked in the intangible blood of hundreds, and reminded himself that if he had cared to look just a little sooner then maybe... And he shook.

"Glad to have you aboard! So, about those Code:Breakers that you mentioned to me before... I had some ideas."

And Masaomi listens.


	93. Sneer

"Aren't you curious?"

Ogami carefully slotted another piece of his scale model of Hikone castle into place, and then leaned back. Conversing while attempting delicate work was liable to lead to disaster. "No."

"You can't tell me that you've never wondered what it might be. I've been a Code:Breaker for years now, and I've never seen it once."

"Yeah. Second's really fast, so he always gets dressed up in armor and stuff and won't let me see."

"If you want to know what Heike's Lost form is that badly," Ogami said with a sigh, "Why don't you ask Toki? He's seen it, hasn't he?"

Sakura pouted, and Rui crossed her arms over her chest. It had been a long shot, but they had both hoped that they could enlist Ogami's assistance. They had tried on their own of course- multiple plans to make Heike lose his power in a place where he could not hide had been set into action, and all of them had failed. Rui was particularly irate- no matter how easily he tended to lose it at inconvenient times, when they actually wanted him to he was either elusive or conservative.

They had dragged him into a mock battle, but he had managed to dredge up a full body suit from somewhere. They'd goaded Yukihina into attacking him several times over the course of a day, but that had proved futile. Heike was always cautious to use his power sparingly when fighting his rival because he knew full-well that those fights could last for days. As a last resort they had stolen his restriction uniform while he was in the shower. He had emerged with another one, and none of them were entirely sure where he had gotten it.

Their most recent plan had aimed a little lower, but they'd thought that their chances of success were higher for precisely that reason.

"We asked him," Sakura replied with a frown, "but he wouldn't say anything."

Yuuki elaborated. "Fourth turned really pale and shut the door and said he didn't want to talk about it."

"M-hm. Then he said that we were better off not knowing." Rui pushed her hair back behind her ear and frowned. "Do you think Heike becomes a zombie? Toki is afraid of those- I've never seen him get that worked up over anything else."

The room fell silent. Ogami picked up his tools again, and set about applying a scant amount of glue to another miniscule piece. "In that case, shouldn't Yukihina know?"

Yuuki's eyes lit up immediately. "Uh-huh! Yukinko said he saw it once!"

"And I'm sure he'll tell us if we ask!" Sakura clenched her fist in anticipation.

Rui shoved her hands into her pockets and slouched out of the room. "Well, if we can't see it I guess we'll have to settle for that. C'mon, let's ask him- I think I saw him in the laundry room with Kouji."

The inquisitive trio made their way downstairs, and found Yukihina leaning against the dryer. He did not acknowledge them when their shadows fell from the doorway, but Kouji glanced over. "Did you three need something?"

Yuuki pushed forward into the increasingly cramped room and tugged on Yukihina's sleeve. He finally admitted their presence, and gave Yuuki a short pat on the head. "Yukinko, you know what Second's Lost form is, right?"

Kouji excused himself from the room.

Yukihina's face split into a distorted smirk, and Sakura found that she'd taken a step behind Rui. She could not recall a time when Yukihina smiling had ever meant anything good. "Yes. I know."

"What's it like?" Yuuki pressed, unphased. "Does he turn all rainbow like he does when he's sick? Or does he get really old or turn into a ghost?"

Yukihina glanced over at the wall again, and his sneer grew. "It really suits him."

"Really suits him? Can't you be a bit more speci-" Rui turned pale, and found herself unable and unwilling to finish her inquiry. If Yukihina, Yukihina of all people, could say that with a grin... "Actually I've got to go take the laundry in. Sakura, can you help?"

Sakura's brow furrowed in confusion, but she nodded.

"Yuuki too."

"But I wanna-"

She grabbed him by the hood and dragged him from the room.

Yukihina watched with mild amusement, the reminiscent smile still playing across his lips.


	94. Deep

Yukihina let the ocean currents pull the tie from his hair. He'd already abandoned his vest and pulled down his hood. There was nothing down here that he wanted to block out- no sounds that he wanted to muffle, nor things that he did not want to see.

They'd entered into another contract. Perhaps it would not further their goals directly, but it would earn them the money that allowed them to travel, and so it was close enough. While Yukihina cared very little for the fate of Eden, and while he could not give much of a damn about the majority of Seeker's goals, he cared about Seeker himself. It helped to care about something, if only just a little, because with every passing day he could feel the pocket where his heart would one day return freezing a little more. Miniscule chips of ice blocked off the veins that needed to one day reattach, and he'd found that the best way to stave off the frost was by maintaining a speck of warmth in whatever humanity he had left.

These thoughts haunted his days. It was only recently that he had found an effective distraction.

They had been hired as mercenaries. It was one of the many varied but always violent hats that they donned for the sake of money. There was a war on. There were several wars on that Yukihina was aware of, and the Re:Codes had managed to dip their hands into all of them at some point or another. This particular conflict involved a fair amount of naval warfare. Yukihina was not sure who had started the fight, or who was in the right, or how many people they had killed already or how many more would die. The only thing that seemed to matter was that one side- the one they were being paid to slaughter- had sent boats against their employers. He was willing to thank whoever had made that decision.

The silt sifted and settled dream-like over his bare feet. The current nipped at the loose ends of his bandages, and the light that filtered down fluctuated at an easy pace. "Water form" had its perks, and this was one that he rarely got to exercise. He stood at the bottom of the sea floor and gazed up at the surface above.

A hazy memory of years long past when he was much more human, much more naive, and much smaller bobbed into consciousness for a spare second.

He could recall a shallow bath.

The scent of pine.

The white noise of water in his ears.

And just under that a woman's voice steeped with concern-

A shadow blotted out the sunlight, and the memory evaporated just as quickly as it had come. Yukihina did not mourn its passing. Ever since he had found a little bit to care for, small memories had bubbled up. They were never anything significant- a passing scent from a restaurant would spark a feeling of nostalgia, or he would experience a significant sense of deja vu when seeing Seeker Lost. Whatever this phantom was, it would have ample time to reassert itself- there was still a month left in their contract, and he suspected that he would spend much of it under water. (He could live here just as easily as on land, even without his immortality. Though he could not recall his living days, he was certain of that much.)

But as much as he appreciated the peaceful atmosphere, it was time to work.

The surface around the enemy ship passing above crackled and froze, locking it in place. Ice shards formed in fleets around him, and rocketed upwards as soon as they'd solidified. Huge pockets of water turned to gas beneath his target. The holes he'd punched in the hull of the ship took on water, and the bubbles of steam, combined with a few strategically placed waves, pulled it under. The crew would be panicking now. Many would drown, and the ones that did not would be easy targets.

It was simple and distant. From here under the depths it seemed little more than a game. Everything floated and moved in slow motion, and the further things were, the vaguer they seemed. It was like living in a dream. Gusts of water pushed past him and he closed his eyes. Perhaps he would wait just a little longer here than was strictly necessary. Another boat might come by, and it was possible that they would get a little extra money to fund Seeker's campaign against Eden if he sunk it.

Yes, just a little longer couldn't hurt. A little longer down here in the deep.


	95. Three Years

Set three years after the end of the series (though two years before the extra chapter.)

Of course the last few chapters haven't been scanlated yet so there may be some in inaccuracies-

Also spoilers.

* * *

><p>Three years had passed since incident with Pandora's box. Three long years, each seeming a little shorter than the last as Yuuki's frame of temporal reference expanded from fifteen years to sixteen to seventeen and then eighteen.<p>

He had not seen Sakura Sakurakouji in three years.

Things had changed, and yet they had stayed the same. He still fought 'evil,' but he did not feel that he was forced to- there was nothing compelling him outside of an internal sense of justice that cartoons had fostered within him from a young age. The threat of Makoto's health had ceased to hold any say over him. After all, no more than six months after the fall of Fujiwara's Eden, Makoto had found the strength to rise from bed, and he had started physical therapy. It would be a long and difficult road to recovery, but with the knowledge that Eden had amassed and no small amount of special power, it was possible that he would be able to live a relatively normal life.

The Tenpouin group was flourishing. Yuuki had long since accepted that he would never be able to create something with quite as much meaning as Nyanmaru, but the next generation back begged to differ. It was strange to see them get all worked up over something that he'd designed, but he supposed that if it had to be anything, he was happy that it was Akugami-kun.

It was a little difficult to keep in touch with everyone as of late. While they had not exactly gone their separate ways, everyone had found new walks of life to wander. Toki seemed focused on the idea of college, Rui was growing her hair long and singing to roaring crowds to bide her time, Heike had been occupied sorting through the pieces of Eden left behind, and Ogami's drive burnt as hot as ever though its focus had shifted from killing to saving.

As for Yuuki, nothing much had changed. He had regained his freedom of movement, and often disappeared for months on end to wander the streets of Japan, near and far. On occasion he would fly overseas for the thrill of it, or help the others with this or that, but he found joy wandering the streets of unfamiliar cities in relative solitude. If there was anything that separated these trips from the ones he'd taken as a child, it was that he no longer cut himself off from the world. He did not 'accidentally' drop his cell phone into a lake, nor did he give it away to anyone who asked. Sometimes he would turn it off for days at a time, or leave it in a coin locker for a day, but he had not 'lost' it in years.

The phone in question chirped, and Yuuki extracted it from his pocket with no small amount of difficulty. Candy wrappers, Nyanmaru phone charms, and ticket stubs cascaded abouthim. He flipped it open, and held it in front of him. "Hey, Yukinko."

Just as he could hear the voice on the other line without pressing the phone to his ear, he could hear Yukihina's smile without seeing it. Yukihina had been smiling a lot more lately. It had been a gradual change, and he still maintained a neutral expression the majority of the time, but the difference was obvious to those who knew him. "Where are you?"

Yuuki gazed up at the sky for a long moment, trying to recall. The sign that he had walked past that morning had said... "Nagano."

"Rui is making dinner. She bought extra ingredients. Will you be back?"

Yuuki glanced from the mountains to the road. "...Uh-huh." There was still two hours until dinner at Shibuya mansion if memory served. He could easily make it back in time if he ran. (Or took the train, but where was the fun in that?) The table would be a little emptier than it had been in the past, but Rui would be there, and Yukinko, and Kouji might very well make an appearance. He had been dropping by with increasing frequency as of late, and Rui was obviously pleased. It wouldn't be the same as it had been- it would never be the same. But Yuuki supposed that he didn't mind change all that much. So he gathered his scattered belongings as best as he could, and set off back home.


	96. Torpor

Hiyori did not know a great deal about family.

She had had one long ago, when she was younger, but they abandoned her for a dark abyss where their debt would never find them. Only she had been left behind.

Ever since then she'd scraped her knowledge from television, and gathered scraps of this and that into bags of facts and speculation. A family had two parents- a mother and a father on average, though sometimes one or the other was missing, and sometimes there were two mothers or two fathers. Sometimes a family meant grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles and people that you did not even know. Sometimes a family meant people that you were so close to that genetics lost their meaning, and only love was left.

Of all of the sorts of family that she had observed, she liked hers best.

The Re:Codes were her family now, and she had only recently recognized it. "Family doesn't have to mean blood," Rui had told her while hugging her close to her chest. She had smelled of leather and whiskey, and Hiyori had wept and wept until she felt that she could cry no longer- until she felt that she would never cry again.

They were a rag-tag bunch. They came and went as Seeker sent them here and there. They taught her to fight. More importantly, they taught her to kill, and she did so because they had told her that it was right. Often when they walked down the streets, people would stare or even shrink away in fear. Hiyori never quite understood why. Yes, Kouji could look intimidating, but didn't they know that he had a soft spot a mile wide? Of course Yukihina seemed cold, but Hiyori knew that he was always up for a game of rock paper scissors if she bothered to ask. And yes, Shigure looked a little strange, but wasn't it what was on the inside, that deep and buried spark of compassion tempered by logic, that made him so wonderful? And as for Seeker... Yes, he was dangerous. Deadly to the extreme. But he was their big brother, and he had been the one to bring them all together, and surely that deserved some sort of recognition. Despite the path of corpses upon which he tred, he would always ask her how she had slept in the morning. (Any nightmares? No? Good.) While there were many places for the Re:codes to be, and many things for them to do, he ensured that she was never away from Rui for long. When the days were long, and the kills were hard, he would buy her treats, and treat her wounds along with the rest of them.

After her house had burned down, she had thought that her family had been incinerated with it. She had been wrong- they weren't her family. She hadn't found it yet. Her family was here, and her place was here.

The years raced past, and she grew from her old clothes and into new ones that Lily and Rui had helped her pick. In time she no longer needed to tilt her head quite as far to look Yukihina in the eye, and Seeker allowed her to wander out alone.

"She's growing up fast." Rui had confided in Kouji when she'd thought Hiyori couldn't hear.

"She's strong. Seeker will have her doing more soon enough."

"He will, won't he?" Rui sighed into her drink. "I wish he wouldn't. Or at least wait a little longer. She's just a little girl..."

A low rumble signaled Kouji's laugh. "I'm sure you've heard her. She's chomping at the bit. I'm surprised that she hasn't run off on her own already."

"That's true. Do you think... Do you think she'll be fine when..." Rui trailed off, and Hiyori strained to hear the words left unsaid.

"Yes. She'll be fine."

The conversation wandered off onto another path, and Hiyori thought that it might be time that she went to bed- after all, Rui and Kouji deserved their privacy.

The next morning when she awoke there was no one beside her- no tangle of blue hair spread over the pillow, nor a comforting hug from a newfound sister. She did not smell food, nor did she hear that oh so familiar voice. She pulled her hair back in two well-loved ribbons, and wandered down the hall rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Seeker sat in the windowsill of their hideout, gazing out at the horizon. "...'ve you seen Rui?" she inquired, pushing the words through a haze of torpor.

She could have sworn that Seeker shifted- just a bit. "She left."

"When'll she be back?"

Seeker did not move his gaze from the distant sky, and Hiyori felt a chill, the same sort that she'd felt in the face of that fire so many years ago, grasp her heart.

"She won't be."


	97. Wax and Wane

**Warning: Character Death **

****I wanted to elaborate on Saechika's final moments. They were pretty sparse.

* * *

><p>Saechika knew that he did not have much time left. He was always living on stolen moments and little bits of vitality that he had ripped from the jaws of death with the force of anger. Months of lying in a hospital bed had never weakened his will to live- the ticking seconds of agony and tedium only served to fuel an ever-growing bonfire of determination. He had fought tooth and nail, and could sense the way that his life flickered in an out, waxing and waning from day to day, hour to hour.<p>

It had been years since then- long years since he had made a full recovery, and found a group that would allow him his coveted revenge. Long years since he had ceased to think much about anything and let the whispers of a parrot decide his course of action.

Now he was free again. Free from hatred, free from anger, and most importantly free from his dark side. It had gone quiet, and he found that the static that came from its absence was a pleasant background hum. Now that his sister was back and his mission was all but over, life would get better... Well, what little of it remained. Because he recognized the sensation. It wasn't so much a matter of physical injuries- the force that had kept him living and served as fuel for his power was growing thin. He would sense it in his bones. The dregs had already begun to rise up and burn the black of shadow and consume him. His second power would likely destroy what was left of his body. And then... And then what? He would leave them, his sister and her friends, completely helpless.

A thought rose to the surface just as a hint of shadow began to gnaw on his arm. First blood. And there would be more blood, because one of the Re:Codes would not abandon Fujiwara.

As easy as it would be to ignore this, as easy as it would be to live his last days in peace, he could not afford to rest. There was one more thing that he had to do. Wrenching himself from the bed felt impossible, but he managed it. Exhaustion weighed him down, but the pain had not yet turned to agony. It did not tether him to the sheets. He could walk.

His feet took him down the hall. Gnashing teeth made of shade materialized at an increasing rate. This journey would only hasten his Code:End, but some things were more important than living. The stairs gave him some trouble. His feet slipped and stumbled every few steps, and the only thing that saved him from falling was the railing. It creaked under the majority of his weight, but held.

The house was silent. It was for the best. They would try to stop him if they spotted him. He staggered for the basement.

Then they came- almost imperceptible, and impossibly light, footsteps echoed off the walls just behind him. But there was still no answer- no inquiry.

Saechika forced his feet to move faster.

There was a spy among them- he knew that. They had been home, and they had spotted him. They were coming.

He stumbled down the stairs to the basement as his Shadow clawed his flesh away, biting into every bit of skin. He could feel his body crumbling. The pain grew in ever increasing waves, but he forced himself to ignore it. He had endured worse.

But a stray slice of power ripped through his shin and he lost his balance. He fell down, down, further and further, unable to stop himself, and too weak to try, until he landed in a heap of agony at the bottom of the stairs. But still. This was only death- only pain. He'd faced all of this and more before, and he refused to let it stop him. So he found his feet and staggered into the passageway. It was just a little further, he reasoned. There was still a chance that he could make it. The footsteps behind him grew louder as they hit the hollow steps. The spy (he was sure that it was them- there could be no one else) would catch up to him soon. But before then... He would do this. He had to.

The footsteps stopped mere feet behind him.

They found the puddle of blood later that night, but no body. It had all been burned to ash.


	98. And so on

Everything has to end at some point. There's no such thing as permanence in an impermanent world, and though they've found a way to scrape at immortality's doors, they do not want their own lives to be eternal. Yukihina has faced that fate, and the way that he had clawed at death's closed door with such desperation served as warning enough to any who might have entertained ideas of infinite existence.

They have all mastered their lifespans. Somewhere along the lines they had struggled to strengthen their powers, and managed such a hold over their life force that they could halt their time if need be. Toki refuses until he is older- he does not want to be barred from drinking, and he insists that he will miss out on many 'valuable life experiences' if he stays seventeen forever. Yuuki decides to try growing up as well, though just because he has surpassed the majority of his friends in height does not mean that he will lose to them in imagination. Rui allows herself another year or two before halting her growth because she knows that Kouji will never age, and she wants to catch up to him and stay level forever after.

Rei decides to stay the same as when Sakura came into his life and changed everything. Perhaps one day he will embrace the future, but for now he clings to his past as a Code:Breaker, and the person that she has made him become. He dons glasses in the hopes that on the odd occasion that he journeys to her college to ensure that she is happy and healthy, she will not recognize him and be pulled back into their world.

She seems to be doing well, and aging despite her ancestry. She is living a normal life, and Aoba stays close, always alert for potential danger. He thinks that she spots him on more than one occasion, but she never acknowledges him with more than a vague frown. Ogami supposes that this is fine.

And so on and so on.

As the years- the prologue of centuries- drag on, they see each other less and less. Yuuki is busy with his companies- they spread all over the world, and in the time that he does not spend managing them, he wanders the city with Yukihina at his side, rambling about nothing and everything that happens to cross his mind.

On the infrequent occasions that they meet in order to dispose of this or that evil, Toki fills the silence with complaints about his course load. He is studying to earn a degree in political science. Despite the obvious answer, Toki never gives them any serious response when they inquire as to why he chose politics of all things.

Kouji wanders the earth, as does Ogami, following the footsteps of a friend and brother long dead, with an idle sort of purpose. They rarely cross paths.

Rui maintains Shibuya mansion and waits for her family to visit, and Heike nurtures his precious Eden back to health.

They are distant now, and they fear that they will grow more distant over the decades that stretch out in front of them. Their missions become sparsely attended and infrequent. But every year without fail, they always return to Shibuya mansion. Once there, they eat, smile, and wander off to the festival that is held downtown. Yuuki buys Nyanmaru masks and gives them as gifts that are promptly discarded. He never seems to mind. Toki makes a point of flirting with every girl he can see, and Heike spins sugar sculptures of questionable artistic value.

Sometimes they think they catch sight of a young woman, about college age with long black hair, weaving through the crowd with a friend, but they never approach her- they simply smile and melt back into the darkness.

And they watch the fireworks, knowing that somewhere in the town she is watching them as well, and remembering that brief time when their two worlds overlapped.


	99. Metered

Despite their justified hatred of Fujiwara's Eden, the Code:Breakers find themselves lost without it. They had pledged their lives, pasts, and futures in return for immunity from a law that likely could not have touched them anyways, and a spot in a gilded cage.

Though they had been forced to kill, death had not been new to them. Toki had watched his sister slaughter hundreds. Heike had witnessed and been party to the massacre of December 32nd. Ogami had seen many die at the hands of his brother, and Rui had participated in the Re:Code's systematic warfare against Eden's footholds. Yuuki had been raised for this.

It was not a terrible imposition, and though society told them that they should mind (and even Yuuki was powerless to resist that pressure), they were not as hesitant as they likely should have been. When the gold leaf shed from the bars, and they saw their prison for what it really was, when they tried to run, they did not have the motivation or the opportunity to cease killing. Their battle continued one corpse at a time until the entire world became embroiled in the jaws of a madman's machinations.

And then... Silence.

Peace.

They were not suited to a normal life. Ogami had repeated this mantra to Sakura countless times, but she had kept faith in their ability to do so. She had almost convinced them that he was wrong. But now that they'd reached the other side of the conflict her ignorant promises are revealed for what they had been all along: desperate naivety.

They are killers now. There is no changing that.

They sit around the table at Shibuya mansion, and the air lays deadly still, trapping the scent of tonight's dinners within a reasonable radius of the food itself. Rui attempts to break the silence. "I think that it might have been different if we weren't like this. Maybe if there weren't special powers or rare kinds... Maybe we could've been like them."

Toki scoffs. "How so?"

"Maybe Ogami and his brother would've gotten along." she mused, watching the heat slip from the meal she'd prepared in a metered stream of steam. "Saechika and I would've gone to school. Maybe I'd have started singing earlier."

"There's no point in speculation." Ogami stated, though Rui thought that she caught a bright glint in his eye.

"Maybe," Toki said, starting off slow, "My dad wouldn't have been such an asshole."

"He would have been long dead by now," Heike added, unnaturally solemn. "And you would never have had a sister."

Toki deflated. "Yeah, that's true. But y'know, it's kinda fun to think about anyway. Think I would've been a star by now? I bet some modeling agency would've scouted me already." but his heart wasn't quite in it. "Hey, Yuuki. You're being pretty quiet. What about you? Think you'd still be a Nyanmaru freak?"

Yuuki had indeed refrained from speaking. He sat at the end of the table, knees tucked up to his chest, and gaze somewhere far away.

"Yuuki? Hey, Earth to Yuuki! You in there?" Toki reached out and whacked the back of Yuuki's skull. He did not give an inch.

Rui smiled and chuckled. Though it was very true that Yuuki was a little spacey, it was rare for him to be quite so unresponsive. In truth it had her worried, but she dared not voice her concern- not when they had finally found some topic of conversation to break the dreaded silence. "I don't think that things would have changed much. I think he'd probably still be just the same, don't you?"

"Uh-uh." All eyes turned back to Yuuki. He hooked his wrists over his knees, and let his head drift to the right. "'Cause if there wasn't stuff like powers, then I wouldn't've been born."

The unhappy silence settled back over the room. Yuuki pulled his portion closer and began to eat.

The food had already gone cold.


	100. Retired

"You have some big shoes to fill."

The new recruits shifted anxiously in their seats, looking from the ceiling to the floor to the walls- anywhere but directly at Yukihina. He had a sort of sneaking presence that could still be interpreted as murderous during the first few meetings, though he'd hardly had occasion to kill a man in years.

Heike watched with some mild amusement from the wall in the corner. Four new faces, all anxious but determined. He thought that this would be a good bunch. It was the first that he had picked himself (with some help from Rui, Ogami, and Kouji), and he couldn't have been happier with his decision.

The thing about being unable to age was that, while your body stayed the same, your mind grew old. It had been some years... Some decades coming, but Toki had left the Code:Breakers. "You'll protect Nenene for me anyway. I've got bigger things to deal with." he'd said, as the reporter on the television behind him shuffled her papers and announced his appointment as Prime Minister. "Can't really run around wiping out evil anymore, but I guess if you're ever in big trouble you can't handle then you can give me a call."

His departure, while not totally unexpected, set off the rest. Rui renounced her title, stating that it was time for her to retire. (But of course she could still be counted on if the Code:Breakers were in a pinch.) Ogami left next. He would still burn evil, he said, but not as Eden's dog. Heike raised an eyebrow at that, but chose not to say anything. Though it had been decades, and he had reformed Eden back into the thing that he'd first imagined- the thing that it always should have been- old grudges were difficult to dismiss. His first impression of Eden had been a positive one, but the same could not be said for Rei.

Heike had remained, and though he had regained a great deal of power with the return of his Eden, he retained his title as Code:02. Those who knew of how much power he really held were few and far between, and those who would have guessed amounted to an even smaller number. His behavior and predilection for public readings of pornography tended to throw curious agents off the tracks.

He was surprised to find that it was a little lonely now that the others had renounced their numbers in favor of names, but at least he had not been entirely alone in his stagnancy.

Yukihina turned from the assembly of newly-minted Code:Breakers to the impressive set of desks in the back, reached over, and dragged Yuuki (still snoring lightly) into the air. "This is Code:01. He will be accompanying you on your first few missions. If you have any questions, ask him. If he is sleeping then ask Heike. Do not try to wake him up." Yukihina dropped Yuuki back behind the desk. "Heike can give you your briefing. One of you can carry Code:01 along with you. _Do not wake him up_."

There was an audible snort of amusement from the new Code:04, and Yukihina couldn't help but grin. They had yet to learn that he did not waste words, and that there were some things that were worth repeating.

He watched them file over to Heike, glanced back over the desk to ensure that Yuuki was still sound asleep (and he was, still clutching a Nyanmaru doll to his chest just as he always would when they'd first met), and took his leave. He was scheduled to have drinks with Kouji and Rui, and it wouldn't do to be late.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **Thank you guys for sticking with me over these two years! I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for all of the support and the reviews- I know I don't reply to them, but I appreciate and read every single one, and every time I see I have a new one my heart just skips a beat I'm so happy!

It's been a fun ride. I don't know if I'll write any C:B fic after this (tbh I'm surprised I had this much in me) but we'll see. Maybe I'll finally write those crossovers that I've wanted to write with it forever! (Like Magi characters as Code:Breakers, and the Code:Breakers in Attack on Titan universe- Though I make no promises ahaha)

Once again, I love all of you lovely readers! Happy 100!


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